2009 Hacker Challenge

W00t!! The 2009 Hacker Challenge is now set to take players! Sign up and get the ball rolling. Check the About area for details on the competition...

Here’s the list of three top teams for the 2009 Hacker Challenge.  Congratulations to you all!

First:
SnackTime – 690 points
Members: ch33zwh1z and r1tzcr4ckrz

Second:
The Overflow Shuttle – 666 points
Members: Wraith and 0xEBFE

Third:
The On-Net Gang – 415 points
Members: zoobah, hexstr and SilentViper

No solo winners this year : ((

Administrivia

Thanks to all the teams who made a showing this year!

Sadly, I will not be able to announce a solo winner – as none submitted any answers : (.  Final scores will be tallied and posted shortly.

Hope to see you guys next year for the 2010 Hacker Challenge!!

Administrivia

At 2200EST tonight we’ll be in the last 24 hours of the 2009 Hacker Challenge.  I’ve checked the accounts and found tons of people have still not submitted their answers (not even one!).  Don’t let the last two weeks be wasted.  Turn in what you were able to accomplish and see how you do.  Reminder: 100% completion is NOT required and was never expected…

Answer Sheet – Open Office Spreadsheet – ODS
Answer Sheet – Microsoft Office Spreadsheet – XLS
Answer Sheet – Flat ASCII – TXT

Also, please keep an eye out for a critique sheet hitting your email in a few days.  It will be going out to all of the players we have addresses to, and your input will be needed in order to make this competition even better next year!

Administrivia

Wow, a couple of teams turned in some early answers on the 4th of July…  0xBADCAFE and 3p|c f@|l sent some items in for consideration and received 63 and 87 points respectively!

Wonder who will be the first to top 400 points – 808 is the max!

Note on support files: Please preface all support files with the number of the item you are answering using that file.  Otherwise, during final grading, we may not correctly identify which item you wanted to answer and not award the full set of points for the given challenge.

Administrivia

W00t!! Secret Squirrel Society is the latest team to make their move, and they have so far gathered 96 points!  Press on, men!

Administrivia

Got some more items from the On-Net Gang to grade, and they appear to have gathered 238 points, so far!  You go, guys!!

Remember: Anyone can upload or email their answer sheets at any time.  Only the VERY last version will be officially graded and used to determine winners.  So, if you want to see how you are stacking up in the competition send your early version along.  Just know, if we don’t get a final one from you before the end of competition – that early version will be your final version…

Administrivia

I checked my script dump and discovered that the On-Net Gang has taken the plunge and uploaded their first files (@ 2252 on 30 June).  Looks like they have gathered 10 points from two successful Savenger Hunt finds!!

Keep em’ coming everybody!  I looove awarding tasty points!!  Oh, and check out the new “Unoffical Scores” tab.

Note: For the record, team 0xBADCAFE was the first group to start uploading their answers with their entries on 25 June.  Guess I should have gotten the script to look back in time ;P.

Administrivia

Sadly, this couldn’t directly coincide with Wednesday, but… You guys have hit the middle of the time alloted for the Hacker Challenge competition!!  W000t!

Developed a cute little script to help me see if there are any uploaded items yet… and so far nothing in the kitty.  Don’t wait till the *last* minute…   Still, ya got till 2200EST on 07 July to finish up.

Administrivia

Everyone’s accounts have been moved over to a far more spacious area (w00t)! Feel free to start uploading answers and scavenger hunt findings. Note: The server is a secure FTP server – normal FTP does not work with it.

Remember:
- Use a SSH-friendly SFTP program (ie: sftp command line, CyberDuck in SFTP mode and WinSCP).
- Make sure you are in passive (PASV) mode.

These two items have, so far, fixed all access problems…

Also, answer sheets have been created using Excel and Open Office Calc. Flat ASCII will be accepted, but please consider using the XLS or ODS forms first. It takes a LOT less time to grade / tabulate points using the spreadsheet versions…

Open Office Spreadsheet – ODS
Microsoft Office Spreadsheet – XLS
Flat ASCII – TXT

Please note that the USERorTEAM portion of the file name needs to be replaced with the solo player or team name that is submitting the answers.  Renaming those files will help us keep your answers from getting confused during the grading period ; ).

Administrivia

I’ve asked my webhost provider about the 9+ hour website blackout.  Hope to know more later today.  Suspect that they moved the SQL databases, as they are doing that with some other users, but I didn’t get a “scheduled outage” notification – so I’m not 100% certain.  In the meantime, the site is up – let us rejoice!

Noted that there are two files that are claiming that players do not have permission to download them.  Weird since they were uploaded just like the others – no special permissions set…  Will fix this tonight when I get home after the conference today (CERT malware workshop is a win). The offending files are connected to #168 and #188, and are annotated in the download page.

Edit @ 1926: The two files have been fixed.  Download awayyyyy!!

Administrivia