110569464
submission
eatvegetables writes:
Title says it all. Surprisingly informative. In depth and detailed interviews about the NSA Codebreaker Challenge.
https://federalnewsnetwork.com...
102952650
submission
eatvegetables writes:
National Security Agency's 2018 Codebreaker Challenge kicked off on Friday, 9/21. Runs through 12/31. Codebreaker Challenge is a months-long, multi-tiered, capture-the-flag competition. Each year's challenge comes complete with its own back story. This year's challenge scenario is that ransomware has hit Gov networks. The ransomware author uses Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts to give victims assurances that they will actually receive a valid decryption key in exchange for the demanded ransom. Total of 8 tasks. First half of challenge focuses on network protocol analysis and binary reverse-engineering. Second half is all about attempting to exploit the blockchain. Penultimate goal is to get decryption key without paying and then to steal ransomware author's money. Registration required. .edu email address required to register. University students are already hard at work trying to push their school to the top of the leaderboard! Go here for challenge details: https://codebreaker.ltsnet.net.... Go here to see leader board: https://codebreaker.ltsnet.net....
93752447
submission
eatvegetables writes:
The U.S. National Security Agency launched Codebreaker-Challenge 2017 Friday night (Sept 15) at 9pm EST. Started off as a reverse-engineering challenge a few years ago but has grown in scope to include network analysis, reverse-engineering, and vulnerability discovery/exploitation. This year's challenge story centers around hackers attacking critical "supervisory control and data acquisition" (SCADA) infrastructure. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out how the SCADA network is being attacked, find the attack vector(s), and stop the bad guy(s)/gal(s)/other(s). Codebreaker-Challenge is unusual for capture-the-flag(ish) contests due to the scope/number of challenges and how long the contest runs (now until end of year). Also (this year, at least), the challenge is built around a less than well-known networking protocol, MQTT. It's open to anyone with a school.edu email address. A site leader-board shows which school/University has the most l33t students. Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Institute of Tech are at the top of the leader-board as of Saturday morning.
