At least when we look back at the smoking hole left where the Internet was when AI tech finally broke free and achieved Skynet levels of user satisfaction, I’ll be able to look back fondly on these times from whatever cell I’ve been relegated to with the knowledge that I finally earned one of those participation awards I kept hearing about.
Now Wombley’s gone and gotten the Naughty-Nice list ransomwared! Santa is not pleased… Elf Stack Fitzy Shortstack and the North Pole SOC need our help.Elf Stack SilverElf Stack Gold Directions for setting up the ELK container can be found in the Help section. Do easy mode first for Silver, then hard mode for Gold. Easy … Read more
Act II Wombley’s getting desparate. Out-elved by Alabaster’s faction, he’s planning a gruesome snowball fight to take over present delivery! Microsoft KC7 KQL Pepper Minstix warns us about a serious cyber threat, and Team Wombley is not so great about OpSec. The link in the objective takes us to the Microsoft KC7 portal. After creating … Read more
With Santa away, Wombley Cube and Alabaster Snowball have each tried to lead. Surely they won’t mess up the naughty and nice list… Curling The first character we see is Bow Ninecandle, who is super enthusiastic about curling. Curling Silver SolutionCurling Gold Solution We are given two hints. The challenge is worked inside of a … Read more
Welcome back to the Geese Islands! Let’s help the elves pack up to return to the North Pole. Orientation Our story begins with Jingle Ringford walking us through a quick orientation exercise. There’s not much to this. We follow the instructions and in return we get a little bit of information about how this years … Read more
Note for SANS: My actual entry write up was submitted as a PDF via email. This is my second year participating in the SANS Holiday Hack Challenge, and I’ve been looking forward to it every since I finished up last year’s challenge and worked through all the other past years that were available online at … Read more
Excerpt from a recently written letter, copied to this blog. Star Wars: A/SF-01 B-Wing starfighter This was harder to do than I thought it would be. What to compare it to? Part of the B-Wing lore is that they are notoriously hard to fly due to the odd gyroscopic nature of the thing – … Read more
Copied from the original letter this was written for… Real Ship(s): “The Caspian Sea Monster” The lesson here is “Just because the engineering is cool, doesn’t make it useful”. The “Ekranoplan” or “Caspian Sea Monster” was a (now long abandoned) attempt by Russia to exploit something called the ‘Wing In Ground” effect. Basically, as a … Read more
Windows: Wow…that was a great update wasn’t it? I’m feeling great. We’re all great, just type in that bitlocker recovery key and we’ll be ready to go. Me: Wait my what now? Oh yeah (nervous laugh) I have that. It’ll be right here…oh, that was silly of me, I know where it’s at just one … Read more
I am keenly aware that I’m missing citations for things that might not bother anyone else but that definitely bother me as I read through that first actual post. I’ll try to get better about that over time – for now I’m just copying things written elsewhere forward. I’ve got some other weird content I’ll … Read more
I started writing these ‘real vs. star wars’ as a way to fill out my otherwise kinda boring letters to my daughter who is in the Navy. I enjoyed it enough that I decided to post them elsewhere which led to setting this blog up. This was the first of those. Real: Mercy Class Hospital … Read more