Ret 2 Shell was originally created at the Xidian University Information Security Association by Reverier-Xu, mainly to host the MoeCTF competitions over the years. Later, as the need grew for a platform that could keep competitions archived and continuously playable, it gradually evolved into the Ret 2 Shell of today.
Tempered by many competitions, Ret 2 Shell kept improving into a feature-rich and user-friendly CTF platform, and gradually expanded to more universities, including China University of Mining and Technology, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Northwest Normal University, and more. It has also successfully hosted major events such as NepCTF 2025 and R3CTF 2025.
Ret 2 Shell is committed to stronger capabilities and a better user experience. We want to give challenge authors enough flexibility while also giving contestants a kind of geek experience that feels almost artistic. Ret 2 Shell is still under active development, but at least for now, you can trust it.
The challenge view of Ret 2 Shell is carefully designed to present long-form rich content, while integrating a script-engine judge, built-in chat feedback, dynamic container management, write-ups, and nearly every other feature you would expect. It gives challenge authors exceptional flexibility and contestants a deeply immersive experience.
To better match the product theme, we actually built a terminal emulator that runs entirely in the browser. You can complete many actions with a mouse on the page, or call tools directly from the command line as if you were using a real terminal.
Ret 2 Shell can host multiple competitions at the same time, from intense 48-hour events to freshman training contests that last for months. All competition data can be archived and exported, and the environment can be reproduced at any point in the future for post-event practice and review.
Every Ret 2 Shell update follows a non-destructive principle. While keeping the software current, all training and competition data from previous years remains accessible. We aim to provide a long-term and stable CTF platform so you can focus on the content itself instead of worrying about platform availability.
We introduced a script-engine judging mechanism for challenges and embedded optional anti-cheating measures at multiple points in the solving lifecycle, including flag steganography, contestant behavior tracking, and anomaly detection, so competition fairness is backed by data. The logging system is built on the tokio tracing ecosystem and supports recording contestant operations across layers and modules for post-event auditing and analysis.
The frontend of Ret 2 Shell is built on the SolidJS ecosystem, while the backend is powered entirely by Rust, bringing excellent reliability, performance, and security at the same time. Over the past five years, Ret 2 Shell has also been tested by several logic-security issues, but none of them led to server-threatening vulnerabilities such as RCE.
Any platform-related security issue can be reported to support@ret.sh.cn, and we will respond and handle it as quickly as possible.