CTF Tools Installer

Bash scripts to set up and tear down a CTF environment on Linux (Ubuntu/Mint) lab machines. Creates an isolated ctf user and installs all tools under their home directory. Supports single-machine installs, offline bundles, and mass deployment via SSH or Ansible.

Tools installed

Tool	Purpose
Ghidra	Reverse engineering — disassemble and decompile binaries
Burp Suite Community	Web — intercept and modify HTTP traffic
pwndbg	Binary exploitation — GDB with extra commands for pwn
pwntools	Python library for scripting exploits
pycryptodome	Python library for cryptography challenges
exiftool	Forensics — read and analyze file metadata

Requirements

• Ubuntu 22.04+ or Linux Mint 21+ (apt-based)
• sudo access
• Internet access (or a pre-built bundle — see below)

Scripts overview

Script	Purpose
install_ctf.sh	Creates ctf user and installs all tools
uninstall_ctf.sh	Removes the ctf user and all their files
make_bundle.sh	Downloads Ghidra and Burp Suite into downloads/ and packs bundle.tar.gz
scan.sh	Nmap ping scan to find live lab machines, saves last octets to ips.txt
deploy.sh	Pushes the bundle to all machines in ips.txt via SSH and runs the install
ansible/deploy.yml	Ansible alternative to deploy.sh

Configuration

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your values:

cp .env.example .env
nano .env

CTF_USER=ctf                        # user that will be created on each machine
CTF_PASS=your_password_here         # password for the ctf user

LAB_USER=your_lab_user_here         # existing user on lab machines (for file transfer)
LAB_PASS=your_lab_password_here
SUDO_USER=your_sudo_user_here       # user with sudo rights on lab machines
SUDO_PASS=your_sudo_password_here
IP_PREFIX=xxx.xxx.xxx               # first three octets of the lab subnet

Single machine install

sudo bash install_ctf.sh

If downloads/ghidra.zip and downloads/burpsuite.jar exist (from make_bundle.sh), the script uses those instead of downloading. Otherwise it fetches them from the internet.

Uninstall

sudo bash uninstall_ctf.sh

Deletes the ctf user and their entire home directory. System packages (gdb, JDK, exiftool) are left in place.

Mass deployment

1. Build the bundle (run once)

Downloads Ghidra and Burp Suite and packs everything into bundle.tar.gz:

bash make_bundle.sh

2. Scan the network

Finds live machines on the subnet defined in .env and saves their last octets to ips.txt:

sudo bash scan.sh

Review ips.txt before deploying — remove any machines you don't want to touch.

3a. Deploy via SSH

Requires sshpass: sudo apt-get install -y sshpass

bash deploy.sh

Copies bundle.tar.gz to each machine, extracts it, and runs install_ctf.sh with sudo. Prints a summary of successes and failures at the end.

3b. Deploy via Ansible

Requires Ansible installed and inventory already configured:

ansible-playbook ansible/deploy.yml

Expects bundle.tar.gz in the repo root.

Logging in as the CTF user

From the desktop login screen, log in as ctf with the password set in .env.

Or from a terminal:

su - ctf

The Python venv activates automatically and all tools are available on PATH — no extra setup needed.

Using the tools

Ghidra — reverse engineering

ghidra &

New project → import your binary → double-click it → CodeBrowser → decompiler panel on the right.

Burp Suite — web exploitation

burpsuite &

Temporary project → Proxy tab → Open Browser → traffic flows through Burp.

pwndbg — binary debugging

gdb ./binary

pwndbg loads automatically on top of GDB. Useful extra commands: checksec, cyclic, vmmap, heap, stack.

pwntools — exploit scripting

from pwn import *
p = process('./binary')      # or remote('host', port)
p.sendline(b'your payload')
p.interactive()

pycryptodome — crypto challenges

from Crypto.Cipher import AES
from Crypto.Util.number import long_to_bytes, bytes_to_long

exiftool — file metadata

exiftool suspicious_image.png

How the environment works

Two lines in /home/ctf/.bashrc handle all of this automatically on login:

export PATH="$HOME/tools:$PATH"   # makes ghidra, burpsuite etc. callable by name
source "$HOME/venv/bin/activate"  # activates the Python venv with pwntools/pycryptodome