SANS Institute & Counter Hack - Holiday Hack Challenge
Information Security - Practical Skills and Awareness
This year's Christmas Capture-The-Flag event from the SANS Institute took in topics that closely mirror current real-world cyber security challenges. Alongside remote printer take-over and a couple of log4j examples, participants tested their skills as attackers and defenders across Linux and Windows hosts as well as cloud environments. Perennial favourites included SQL injection, network sniffing and password cracking. More fun that charades.
Mike joined what was his fourth HHC and completed all 13 objectives along with the many "just-for-fun" side challenges by closing date. It was a tough set of problems this year, but for sure HHC is a great example of the maxim "no pain, no gain".
At the wrap-up and awards ceremony held on 9th February 2022, Mike was delighted to see himself on the "Super Honorable Mentions" list for a second year - a cohort of 53 drawn from around 15,000 who enrolled for the challenge.12,496 made it through the first challenge, with 282 people / teams completeing the full set of objectives and challenges this year.
If you'd like to see what participating in HHC involves, take a look at Mike's lab-notes style write-up on the 2021 tab here. You can also check out this year's award winning entries via the SANS announcement here.