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 very least, they're exercises to keep your mind sharp and your skills prepared for the unexpected.
This year, Palo Alto Networks (notably their threat research team Unit 42), put together a great CTF that was open to the public for one month. Uniquely, they offered sizable cash prizes to the first person to win each category of challenges and to the top winners overall.
Categories of challenges were separated between: Windows, Unix, Documents, Mobile, Random, and Threat. While some of these are apparent, and Random was a cool assortment of off-the-wall stuff, Threat was unique for being very abstract problems of pattern analysis and writing YARA rules. Overall, nearly 40 challenges that were woven through the narrative of the excellent film starring David Bowie: Labyrinth.
While a small number were able to complete each and every one of these challenges, I was excited to just do a handful, about 32. What I'll provide here are just a few of those where I feel like I did something unique or profoundly stupid to obtain the answer.
