Full Report
Written by: Nick Harbour The eleventh Flare-On challenge is now over! This year proved to be a tough challenge for the over 5,300 players, with only 275 completing all 10 stages. We had a blast making this contest and are happy to see it continue to be a world-wide phenomenon. Those that finished all stages this year may be eligible to receive this elite desk trophy to the envy of your coworkers and family. We would like to thank the challenge authors individually for their great puzzles and solutions: frog - Nick Harbour (@nickharbour) checksum - Chuong Dong (@cPeterr) aray - Jakub Jozwiak FLARE Meme Maker 3000 - Moritz Raabe (@m_r_tz) sshd - Christopher Gardner (@t00manybananas) bloke2 - Dave Riley (@6502_ftw) fullspeed - Sam Kim Clearly Fake - Blas Kojusner (@bkojusner) serpentine - Mustafa Nasser (@d35ha) CATBERT Ransomware - Mark Lechtik (@_marklech_) This year’s challenge hosted 5,324 registered users, with 3,066 of them solving at least one stage. The difficulty curve ended up smoother than last year’s, with a nice progression of people falling off at stages 5, 7, and 9. Coincidentally, based on finisher feedback those were also the consensus favorite challenges this year. Does that mean we should up the difficulty next time? Last year Germany was far out ahead of the leaderboard with 19 finishers to 2nd place Singapore’s 15. This year Vietnam takes the lead with 21 finishers and the USA comes in second with 20. All the binaries from this year’s challenge are now posted on the Flare-On website. Here are the solutions written by each challenge author: SOLUTION #1 SOLUTION #2 SOLUTION #3 SOLUTION #4 SOLUTION #5 SOLUTION #6 SOLUTION #7 SOLUTION #8 SOLUTION #9 SOLUTION #10
Analysis Summary
The provided article appears to be a summary or write-up related to a Capture The Flag (CTF) or similar security challenge event, detailing participation statistics, difficulty levels, and a list of authors/solvers. **It does not contain specific technical details about attack tools, malware families, or defined TTPs that can be mapped to the required structure (like C2 domains, specific hashes, or detailed malware capabilities).**
Therefore, the resulting summary will indicate this lack of content based on the input context.
---
# Tool/Technique: N/A (Context solely relates to CTF summary)
## Overview
The provided context is a summary of participation and authorship from a security challenge event (CTF). It lists statistics like player counts, solver rates, difficulty stages (referencing the concept of "coincidence" at specific stages), and the handles of authors and solution providers. It does not describe any specific malware, hacking tool, or set of TTPs.
## Technical Details
- Type: N/A (Event Summary Data)
- Platform: N/A
- Capabilities: N/A
- First Seen: N/A
## MITRE ATT&CK Mapping
- No applicable mappings can be inferred from the provided metadata.
## Functionality
### Core Capabilities
- None related to offensive security tools or malware are described. The context focuses on CTF participation metrics.
### Advanced Features
- None described.
## Indicators of Compromise
- File Hashes: N/A
- File Names: N/A
- Registry Keys: N/A
- Network Indicators: N/A
- Behavioral Indicators: N/A
## Associated Threat Actors
- The context lists challenge authors and solvers (e.g., "frog", "checksum", "CATBERT Ransomware"), but these are handles associated with solving a challenge, not necessarily known threat actors using specific tooling described within the text.
## Detection Methods
- N/A
## Mitigation Strategies
- N/A
## Related Tools/Techniques
- N/A