As someone who has participated in numerous Capture The Flag (CTF) competitions, I was excited when Huntress Lab announced their CTF late last year. Anytime a new organization ventures into hosting CTFs, it brings fresh perspectives, twists, and innovative approaches to data manipulation to obtain flags. I found their daily-released challenges to be particularly engaging. …
Since its inaugural year I have been a participant in the FireEye / Mandiant Flare-On challenges produced by FLARE, the FireEye Labs Advanced Reverse Engineering. FLARE is one of the industry’s most accomplished team of reverse engineers and they have created an annual CTF/ that focuses on reverse engineering challenges, many of which are rooted …
The MidAtlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (MACCDC) is one of the many regional CCDCs that includes a somewhat unique aspect: law enforcement and investigations. For those unfamiliar with CCDC’s, they are live network security competitions where schools face off against each other, and a red cell of pentesters, to build and maintain a secure network. …
2017 brings us one of the best, though newest, CTFs: Palo Alto’s LabyREnth.The 2016 iteration was a grueling set of 3 dozen challenges across multiple topics that tested one’s ability, skill, patience, and endurance. 2017’s challenge one-upped the previous by having a fully explorable, rogue-style text world in which one could explore to find challenges. …
At least once a year I try to publish my work process for a Capture The Flag (CTF) event. If you’re not familiar with CTFs, they’re a timed challenge of very difficult or obscure challenges to gain a “flag” to submit for points. Some enjoy these, some feel them a waste of time. At the …
Today we bring you a special guest posting by Tony “@captcook32” Cook. Late last year GrrCon hosted their anticipatory excellent set of challenges which included an in depth memory forensics challenge by Wyatt Roersma. Tony and myself took a few days on a down week to try our hand at the challenge. I lacked the …
The topic of web-based advertising is always a hot topic for discussion, debate, and outright argument. One realizes that the Internet in which we’ve grown accustomed to is reliant on ads; after all, Google is an advertisement company. In the recent past we’ve seen articles on malvertising targeted using Skype and more recently using the New York …
Happy New Years! As part of the new year, let’s make an effort to make your defensive posture better, especially through quicker and more effective malware analysis! A few years ago I created a sample malware analysis sandbox script to use for the analysis and reverse engineering that I performed on a daily basis. Let’s …
The second annual FLARE On is a reverse engineering challenge put forth by the FireEye Labs Advanced Reverse Engineering (FLARE). While accepted as a very advanced and tactical recruiting method, it resonates with those who love CTF challenges. In 2014 the inaugural FLARE On presented seven challenges. As a finisher, you can read my write-up here. …
In many forensics examinations, including those of civil and criminal nature, there is an art to finding remnants of previously installed applications. Fearing detection, or assuming that an examination is forthcoming, many suspects attempt to remove unauthorized or suspicious applications from a system. Such attempts are usually unsuccessful and result only in additional hours of …