I'm not a low-level security hacker but I've created and debugged enough C code in my career to follow exactly what is going on here. I don't know if I would h

I'm not a low-level security hacker but I've created and debugged enough C code in my career to follow exactly what is going on here. I don't know if I would have been able to derive this solution on my own though, that's where the creativity comes in. However, I'm guessing these CTF challenges are usually kind of "similar" in the same way that ACM programming challenges are. If you do these sort or challenges often enough it should become easier.