SANS Holiday Hack Challenge 2020

With the holiday season approaching, I was anxiously waiting to get started with this year’s edition of the Holiday Hack Challenge hosted as part of KringleCon III at the North Pole.

If you don’t know what the Holiday Hack Challenge is, I linked a video below where Ed Skoudis, the mastermind behind it all, gives an introduction and explains everything you should know before starting:

I’ve been coming back to take part in the Holiday Hack for the last 5 years, and it never fails to warm my heart and brighten up the holiday season. Last year was especially rewarding as I managed to solve all the objectives and earn a spot in the Super Honorable Mention category with my write-up. It was such an awesome feeling! 😇

Naturally, I was eager to see if I could repeat it again this year, hence this write-up was born. Besides the lure of the prizes, I think it’s also a great way to document the stuff I’ve learnt, so that I can return to it whenever needed. This year I stared writing in parallel with solving the objectives, so I didn’t need to pull an all-nighter before submission deadline to get it ready for submission. It worked much better than last year!

Along the way I also watched all the conference talks from the KringleCon III presenters, that contained incredibly valuable information for some of the objectives! Be sure to check them out yourself, they are available as a Youtube playlist. Below is the official agenda for the virtual conference:

It’s time to get started with the objectives!