Slashdot Mirror
A New Challenge from Honeynet
cjpez writes: "The people at the Honeynet have issued another challenge on the Bugtraq mailing list. Instead of hacking into a box, though, this time your goal is to submit the best analysis of a binary file they'll post on Monday, May 6th. Think you're good at reverse engineering? Then try it out! They're even offering actual prizes, so you can get something besides the feeling of personal fulfillment for your trouble. The post hasn't quite made it to SecurityFocus' Bugtraq Archive yet, but I did find it at another Bugtraq archive in Germany (slashdottings abound!). The URL included in the email, http://project.honeynet.org/reverse/, doesn't seem to be active yet, so presumably we can assume it'll go up on Monday. The post fails to address other concerns, though: will the winner be in violation of the DMCA? :P The challenge was also issued, obviously enough, on SecurityFocus' Honeypot mailing list."" In a later note, he points out that the announcement has finally made it to the Bugtraq archive page." (And that URL is active now.)
Actually, it's a compromise that Honeynet encountered, could not decipher, and decided to have some other poor saps do their work for them. If you find out what it is and what it does, but only provide scant information to Honeynet, you don't win the prize. It's sort of like some of those companies that sponsor hacking "contests". They challenge people to compromise a test bed they have set up, and whoever does wins some grand prize. The only catch is that you have to tell them anything and everything, to the last detail, that you did. If you simply only leave proof that you were successful, then you don't get the prize. These are cheap scams to outsource some work/research/testing that needs to be done, to the public for only the cost of a few prizes (even though they may be somewhat decent) for much less than it would take to hire someone professionally for $50k, $60k, or $70k a year.
*Takes off tinfoil hat.*
Why bother?
I mean, the people from the honeynet project are going to post the complete entries of the top 20 anyway, and one of the criteria they're going to use is how well documented (i.e. "good for learning") the entry is. 'Tis better to learn that way than to stumble through hundreds of "I got this far and then quit" entries on some quickly pieced together slash site.
I for one hope that I'll actually get off my ass and enter this one; I've analyzed a few of their forensics "scan of the month" but have never gotten around to submitting a writeup. (Expository writing always seems so draining)