A feature-riches CTF challenge platform

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🚀 Deployment

Ret2Shell is single binary with requirements of redis/valkey 8+, postgres 18+, nats 2+ and optional VictoriaLog and registry.

All the components could be deploy anywhere, so you can deploy ret2shell as you like.

🛠️ Development

1. Install Toolchains

Install Rust for backend

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Then use rustup to install the latest stable toolchain.

rustup install stable

You are done for backend development.

Install Node.js and Pnpm for frontend

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_21.x | sudo -E bash -

Then install pnpm

corepack enable pnpm

2. Setup Development Environment

Setup frontend

Frontend files are located in web/ directory. Enter the directory or add --prefix=web option after pnpm command.

Setup frontend dependencies:

pnpm install

Setup other services

See deploy/nginx-module/ret2shell.dev.conf. You could put it into your nginx configuration directory like /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/.

You may need other services like database, redis to be configured, please refer to deploy/docker-compose.dev.yml.

Copy config/config.sample.toml to config/config.toml, and modify it to fit your environment.

For other deployments, see at deploy/.

3. Launch

Frontend

To start a development server, run the following command at web/ context:

pnpm dev --host

Or run pnpm --prefix=web dev --host at the root directory.

Note

If you want to specify a remote backend server, you can add environment variable VITE_DEV_API_TARGET when running the development server. For example:

VITE_DEV_API_TARGET=http://localhost:8080 pnpm dev

This would be helpful if you only focus on frontend development.

Backend

Run the following command to start the backend server:

cargo run --bin r2s-server

4. Build

Make sure you have installed the toolchains.

To build frontend files:

pnpm build

The built files will be produced in web/dist.

To build backend server binary:

# if you want to host it with systemd
cargo build --release --bin r2s-server
# or you want to host it in an older linux distro
cargo build --release --bin r2s-server --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl

The built binary will be produced in target/release/, musl binaries will be produced in target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/.

You can also build the docker image:

# if you use fish
./release-image.fish
# or run with bash
./release-image.sh

🤝 Contributing

We welcome and appreciate your contributions to Ret2Shell! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines on how to submit changes, commit conventions, pull request practices, and code style expectations.

If you have interesting derivative projects or extensions related to Ret2Shell, feel free to share them in Discussions.

For general discussions and questions about Ret2Shell, you can also post in Discussions.

📄 License

Ret2Shell is distributed under a GPL-3.0-derived custom copyleft license that incorporates GPL-3.0 in Appendix A and adds user-facing monetization restrictions. See LICENSE for the binding license text and COMMERCIAL_POLICY.md for plain-language guidance.

Ret2Shell is licensed under:

• LICENSE: the binding license text.
• COMMERCIAL_POLICY.md: English guidance and interpretation notes.
• COMMERCIAL_POLICY.zh-cn.md: Simplified Chinese translation of the policy guide.