The Ninth Annual Flare-On Challenge is upon us. The event, which hosted by the International Association of Firefighters, will held on August 1-3, and participants will be able to earn prizes. If you are interested in joining the event, you can learn more about registration, rules, and prize information in this article.
9th Annual Flare-On Challenge
The Flare-On challenge is a CTF-style challenge, where a player to enter a flag in a specific input box to score. The challenge hosted by FLARE, the FireEye / Mandiant reverse engineering team. The challenge lasts for six weeks and runs from September 30, 2022, to November 11, 2022.
It’s a simple game that’s designed to played with an open-source SDL library. The input box allows you to enter up to 75 characters. Once you have entered the flag, the software will poll the input box and display a flag. Over 3,574 participants have played the challenge.
The challenges have designed to mimic real-world attacks. They also encourage malware analysts to find and identify flags. The game written in Python and distributed in EXE format. A macOS emulator provided to all participants. The challenge is available as matching source code. There’s also a live public scoreboard to see who wins.
Registration
If you’re into CTF games, you’ve probably heard of Flare-On. This is a contest held by the FireEye FLARE team to challenge security researchers to find flags hidden in malware. To participate, you’ll need to register for the contest and then complete a series of challenges. We’ll highlight four of the eleven challenges for you.
One of the most exciting challenges of all is a puzzle that involves reverse engineering. You’ll given a piece of information – a stego – which you will need to find a way to exploit. After that, you’ll presented with a screen showing a flag. You’ll then need to figure out a way to retrieve the flag. In this case, you’ll need to use an XOR decryption loop to pull the information out of the image.
The Flare-On Challenge will be running for six weeks, starting September 30 and ending November 11, 2022. It’s easy to participate. You can either download an executable file or go through PyGame to run the code. Once you’ve done that, you’ll need to enter a flag to score.
Prizes
Thousands of participants from around the world participated in the Flare-On Challenge, a contest that targeted reverse engineers. The Flare-On website allows you to find out about the past challenges and winners. You can also watch a live countdown timer.
FireEye Labs sponsored the Flare-On Challenge. They invited contestants to their office and set up a special prize for them. The team has a digital lock on their door, thick LED dimming glass, and an old computer. They have a list of things to buy at the party.
The Flare-On challenge included eleven challenges. Some of the challenges required you to type a command. Others required you to use various techniques to recover shredded documents. The challenge aimed at reverse engineers and security professionals. There were prizes for winning each of the challenges. The prize awards were subject to change. You can learn more about the prizes here.
The prize award for the first non-government organization to launch reusable manned spacecraft twice within two weeks given to NASA. The competition included eleven challenges that targeted reverse engineering, security, and malware analysts.
