Include generated config, pages, and users when generating CTFd challenges ZIP

[netr0m]

Describe Problem

Each time we set up a new instance of the CTFd service (typically every time we deploy), we have to manually intervene by completing the configuration steps in CTFd. This includes creating a new user, configuring the settings, and importing the custom pages defined in guides-and-tips/. Rather than doing this manually, we should consider generating the user JSON and config JSON to reduce the amount of manual work required.

Currently, we generate the challenges file for CTFd with the script generate-challenges.sh, which produces a ZIP file containing challenges.json, among other things. This is manually uploaded to CTFd after configuration has taken place.

By extending this script, we could potentially include all common configurations in the zip file and upload it directly, eliminating the need for manual steps.

Suggest Solution

• Look at the contents of a backed up ZIP file exported from CTFd to identify how to generate such files
• Implement logic in generate-challenges.sh to
  • generate these JSON files, and add them to the ZIP file produced by juice-shop-ctf-cli
  • upload the ZIP file to the CTFd instance

Additional Details

[netr0m]

❯ cat users.json | jq
{
  "count": 2,
  "results": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "oauth_id": null,
      "name": "admin",
      "password": "$bcrypt-...",
      "email": "<EMAIL>",
      "type": "admin",
      "secret": null,
      "website": null,
      "affiliation": null,
      "country": null,
      "bracket": null,
      "hidden": 1,
      "banned": 0,
      "verified": 0,
      "team_id": null,
      "created": "<DATE>"
    },
    ...
  ]
}

[netr0m]

Relevant files:

• users.json
• config.json
• pages.json

[netr0m]

Closing this as not doing/unresolvable, as

• dealing with the mix between JSON and CSV files is messy, and prone to break when fields change.
• the instance must be configured prior to uploading/restoring such files
• we'd have to convert the challenges CSV to the JSON format, duplicating internal logic of CTFd.

An improved approach is proposed in #58 , replacing the need for this approach.