Challenges
The Honeynet Project goal is to improve the security of the Internet by sharing lessons learned about the most common threats. We deploy honeynets all around the world, capture attacks in the wild, analyze this information and share our findings. Based on this information, the security community can better understand the threats they face and how to defend against them.
The purpose of Honeynet Challenges is to take this learning one step farther. Instead of having the Honeynet Project analyze attacks and share their findings, Challenges give the security community the opportunity to analyze these attacks and share their findings. The end results is not only do individuals and organizations learn about threats, but how to learn and analyze them. Even better, individuals can see the write-ups from other individuals, learning new tools and technique for analyzing attacks. Best of all, these attacks are from the wild, real hacks.
We will post challenges with latest attacks, such as a mixture of server-side attacks on the latest operating systems and services, attacks on client-side attacks that emerged in the past few years, attacks on VoiP systems, web applications, etc. At the end of each challenge, we will provide a sample solution created by our members using the state-of-the-art tools that are publicly available, such as libemu and dionaea. Submissions received are judged by our members and the top three submissions are recognized and awarded with small prizes.
Past challenges:
- Mar. 19th 2015: Challenge 14 - Weird Python - completed - results posted on Apr 7th, 2015
- Dec. 31st 2012: Challenge 13 - Message in a Bottle Picture - completed - results posted on Apr 8th, 2013
- Aug. 3rd 2012: Challenge 12 - Hiding in Plain Sight - completed - results posted on Oct 16th, 2012
- Mar. 17th 2012: Challenge 11 - Dive Into Exploit - completed - results posted on Aug 2nd, 2012
- Nov. 1st 2011: Challenge 10 - Attack Visualization - completed - results posted on Feb 16th, 2012
- Aug. 3rd 2011: Challenge 9 - Mobile Malware - completed - results posted on Nov 1st, 2011
- May 9th 2011: Challenge 8 - Malware Reverse Engineering - completed - results posted on Sep 1st, 2011
- March 1st 2011: Challenge 7 - Forensic Analysis of a Compromised Server - completed - results posted on Saturday, May 7th 2011
- November 1st 2010: Challenge 6 - Analyzing Malicious Portable Destructive Files - completed - results posted on Friday, December 24th 2010
- September 1st 2010: Challenge 5 - Log Mysteries - completed - results posted on Tueday, October 26th 2010
- June 1st 2010: Challenge 4 - VoIP- completed - results posted on Saturday, July 24th 2010
- March 28th 2010: Challenge 3 - banking troubles - completed - results posted on Wednesday, May 12th 2010
- Feb 16th 2010: Challenge 2 - browsers under attack - completed - results posted on March 23rd 2010
- Jan 18th 2010: Challenge 1 - pcap attack trace - completed - results posted on Feb 15th 2010
Forensic Challenges from a few years ago can be accessed below:
- Scan of the Month Challenges
These are monthly challenges for the security community to decode the attack in the wild. These challenges vary, from an NT webserver attack to reverse engineering malware. These also vary in degree of difficulty from Beginner, to Intermediate, to Advance. Note: Due to resource limitations, we can no longer provide these challenges every month.
You can download all archived SotM challenges here (90MB). - The Reverse Challenge
The Reverse Challenge was held from 06 May to 31 May, 2002. The Challenge was to decode a binary captured in the wild. For this Challenge, there were even prizes!. The purpose is to develop the communities understanding of the value of reverse engineering, and how to do it.
You can download the entire Reverse Challenge here (27MB). - The Forensic Challenge
The Forensic Challenge was held from 15 January - 19 February of 2001. The Challenge was to conduct a full forensic analysis of a Linux Red Hat 6.2 computer hacked in the wild. There were thirteen entries for the contest, each entry detailing how they analyzed the hacked systems.
You can download the entire Forensic Challenge here (12MB).