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Before yesterdayThreat Research

Announcing the Eighth Annual Flare-On Challenge

12 August 2021 at 15:30

The FLARE team is once again hosting its annual Flare-On challenge, now in its eighth year. Take this opportunity to enjoy some extreme social distancing by solving fun puzzles to test your mettle and learn new tricks on your path to reverse engineering excellence. The contest will begin at 8:00 p.m. ET on Sept. 10, 2021. This is a CTF-style challenge for all active and aspiring reverse engineers, malware analysts, and security professionals. The contest runs for six full weeks and ends at 8:00 p.m. ET on Oct. 22, 2021.

This year’s contest will consist of 10 challenges and feature a variety of formats, including Windows, Linux, and JavaScript. This is one of the only Windows-centric CTF contests out there and we have crafted it to represent the skills and challenges our FLARE team faces.

If you smash your way through all 10 challenges, you will receive a prize and permanent recognition on the Flare-On website to honor your greatness. Prize details will be revealed later, but as always, it will be worthwhile swag to earn the envy of your peers. Prior year’s prizes were belt buckles, a replica police badge, a challenge coin, a medal, a massive pin, and a cyber-styled skeleton key.

Check the Flare-On website for a live countdown timer, to view the previous year’s winners, and to download past challenges and solutions for practice. For official news and information, we will be using the Twitter hashtag: #flareon8.

2015 FLARE-ON Challenge Solutions

8 September 2015 at 14:56

The first few challenges narrowed the playing field drastically, with most serious contestants holding firm through challenges 4-9. The last two increased the difficulty level and proved a difficult final series of challenges for a well-earned finish line.

The FLARE On Challenge always reaches a very wide international audience. Outside of the USA, this year’s country with the most finishers was China, with and impressive 11 winners. I hope that massive shipment of belt buckles doesn’t get caught up in customs! The performance of contestants from Vietnam and Slovakia were also particularly commendable, as both held early leads in total finishers. Based on the locations we are sending the challenge prizes to (people who responded with their shipping info by noon today) we can say that 33 countries had finishers this year. This next graphs shows the total winners by country this year.

And without further ado, here are the solutions for this year’s challenges, each written by their respective challenge creator.

1.Β Β Β Β  CLICK HERE FOR SOLUTION #1 Β 

2.Β Β Β Β  CLICK HERE FOR SOLUTION #2 Β 

3.Β Β Β Β  CLICK HERE FOR SOLUTION #3 Β 

4.Β Β Β Β  CLICK HERE FOR SOLUTION #4 Β 

5.Β Β Β Β  CLICK HERE FOR SOLUTION #5 Β 

6.Β Β Β Β  CLICK HERE FOR SOLUTION #6 Β 

7.Β Β Β Β  CLICK HERE FOR SOLUTION #7 Β 

8.Β Β Β Β  CLICK HERE FOR SOLUTION #8 Β 

9.Β Β Β Β  CLICK HERE FOR SOLUTION #9 Β 

10.Β Β  CLICK HERE FOR SOLUTION #10 Β 

11.Β Β  CLICK HERE FOR SOLUTION #11 Β 

We hope you had fun and learned something new about reverse engineering! Stay tuned for the third FLARE On Challenge coming in 2016!

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