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HACKvent 2021 Write-up

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Hackvent 2021 is over!
Once again, this year’s Hackvent was terrific – even though it was uncertain until the start whether it would take place at all. Eventually, the event was a traditional, full-blown Hackvent! Thanks to all challenge contributors who made this possible. I especially loved both Blockchain challenges, the binary exploitation on day 14, and the reverse engineering challenge on day 22. Less pleasant was the fact that some challenges were very resource-intensive this year. Some challenges took several hours of computing time on my laptop.
This year I did manage to complete all the challenges. Unfortunately, not all of them within 24 hours to get the total score. I submitted the flag for three challenges late (day 10, 17, and 19). And like every year, I liked the discussions around the CTF very much. Shouts to ice, jokker, ludus, DrSchottky, and all other participants.

https://ranking.competition.hacking-lab.com/
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HACKvent 2020 write-up

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What a blast!

I couldn’t wait for HACKvent to happen. The closer December came, the more excited I became. This year, HACKvent was the only CTF I participated in. There were so many things going on that I didn’t have the time and energy to participate in other CTFs in 2020.

All the sleepless nights were worth it. I managed to solve all challenges in time and finish HACKvent the third time in a row as one of the event’s perfect scorers. I ended up in 10th place in the official ranking, whereas the first 27th hackers got a perfect score. After participating at HACKvent for 5 years, I still don’t understand how the official ranking works, though. 😀

https://ranking.competition.hacking-lab.com/

According to an unofficial ranking, which sorts by the accumulated time of all submitted solutions I am on the 14th place among all perfect scorers. With more than 12 days delay to the fastest hacker.

https://hackvent-stats.herokuapp.com/

Thanks to my family for being able to handle my insomnia and my stress-level during this month. Thanks to ludus, jokker, multifred, marsh, veganjay, DrSchottky, explo1t, mtdcr, darkstar, and atwolf0, for all the good discussions. And thanks to Compass Security and all contributors for making HACKvent possible again.

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HACKvent 2019 write-up

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HACKvent… Initially, I didn’t want to participate at all – or at least not go all in and solve every challenge in time. I started solving the first ones and as the challenges became harder and of course more interesting I got more and more hooked. In the end I did solve them all, and in time.

A big part of the CTF are interactions and discussions with other participants. Thanks and shouts to ludus, jokker, 0xI, multifred, veganjay and others for the good discussions, support and motivation!

This year the event ran on the brand new Hacking Lab 2.0. There are still some minor issues, like the responsive design which can be optimized. The session timeout was a bit short for my taste, but hey Security! 😄 Issues which occurred with some challenges were not Hacking Lab 2.0 related. All in all I got a very good impression of the new HL.

I will never understand how the ranking works in Hacking-Lab. There were three different rankings (the one in the registered event, a public one and a statistics page) and all three seemed to have a different ordering. 😅 Two of the rankings are shown in the print-screens below. The black & green statistics page is probably the most accurate one. At least with the diff in minutes to the fastest perfect scorer the ranking looks about right.

I am very happy to have finished HACKvent as perfect scorer!

https://ranking.academy.hacking-lab.com/
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