SANS Holiday Hack Challenge 2024 - Prologue

Elf Connect

Difficulty: ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄
Help Angel Candysalt connect the dots in a game of connections.

Hints

Elf Connect Easy

From: Angel Candysalt
I love brain games! This one is like the New York Times Connections game. Your goal here is to find groups of items that share something in common. Think of each group as having a hidden connection or theme-four items belong together, and there are multiple groups to find! See if you can spot patterns or common threads to make connections. Group all the items correctly to win!

Elf Connect Hard

From: Angel Candysalt
WOW! A high score of 50,000 points! That’s way beyond the limit! With only four rounds and a max of 400 points per round, the top possible score should be 1,600 points. So, how did someone get to 50,000? Something unusual must be happening!

If you’re curious, you might want to check under the hood. Try opening the browser’s developer tools console and looking around-there might even be a variable named ‘score’ that could give you some insights. Sometimes, games hold secrets for those who dig a little deeper. Give it a shot and see what you can discover!

Silver trophy

The JS of the page itself reveals the solutions, so I wrote a quick nodejs script to print them out and easily obtain silver:

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const wordSets = {
    1: ["Tinsel", "Sleigh", "Belafonte", "Bag", "Comet", "Garland", "Jingle Bells", "Mittens", "Vixen", "Gifts", "Star", "Crosby", "White Christmas", "Prancer", "Lights", "Blitzen"],
    2: ["Nmap", "burp", "Frida", "OWASP Zap", "Metasploit", "netcat", "Cycript", "Nikto", "Cobalt Strike", "wfuzz", "Wireshark", "AppMon", "apktool", "HAVOC", "Nessus", "Empire"],
    3: ["AES", "WEP", "Symmetric", "WPA2", "Caesar", "RSA", "Asymmetric", "TKIP", "One-time Pad", "LEAP", "Blowfish", "hash", "hybrid", "Ottendorf", "3DES", "Scytale"],
    4: ["IGMP", "TLS", "Ethernet", "SSL", "HTTP", "IPX", "PPP", "IPSec", "FTP", "SSH", "IP", "IEEE 802.11", "ARP", "SMTP", "ICMP", "DNS"]
};

let correctSets = [[0, 5, 10, 14], [1, 3, 7, 9], [2, 6, 11, 12], [4, 8, 13, 15]];

for (const [key, value] of Object.entries(wordSets)) {
    console.log (`####################`)
    console.log (`wordSet       --> ${value}`)
    for (var i = 0; i < correctSets.length; i ++) {
        correctSet = correctSets[i]
        let answer = []
        for (var j = 0; j < correctSet.length; j ++) {
            answer.push(value[correctSet[j]])
        }
        console.log (`correctSet #${i} --> ${answer}`)   
    }
    console.log (`####################`)
}
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####################
wordSet       --> Tinsel,Sleigh,Belafonte,Bag,Comet,Garland,Jingle Bells,Mittens,Vixen,Gifts,Star,Crosby,White Christmas,Prancer,Lights,Blitzen
correctSet #0 --> Tinsel,Garland,Star,Lights
correctSet #1 --> Sleigh,Bag,Mittens,Gifts
correctSet #2 --> Belafonte,Jingle Bells,Crosby,White Christmas
correctSet #3 --> Comet,Vixen,Prancer,Blitzen
####################
####################
wordSet       --> Nmap,burp,Frida,OWASP Zap,Metasploit,netcat,Cycript,Nikto,Cobalt Strike,wfuzz,Wireshark,AppMon,apktool,HAVOC,Nessus,Empire
correctSet #0 --> Nmap,netcat,Wireshark,Nessus
correctSet #1 --> burp,OWASP Zap,Nikto,wfuzz
correctSet #2 --> Frida,Cycript,AppMon,apktool
correctSet #3 --> Metasploit,Cobalt Strike,HAVOC,Empire
####################
####################
wordSet       --> AES,WEP,Symmetric,WPA2,Caesar,RSA,Asymmetric,TKIP,One-time Pad,LEAP,Blowfish,hash,hybrid,Ottendorf,3DES,Scytale
correctSet #0 --> AES,RSA,Blowfish,3DES
correctSet #1 --> WEP,WPA2,TKIP,LEAP
correctSet #2 --> Symmetric,Asymmetric,hash,hybrid
correctSet #3 --> Caesar,One-time Pad,Ottendorf,Scytale
####################
####################
wordSet       --> IGMP,TLS,Ethernet,SSL,HTTP,IPX,PPP,IPSec,FTP,SSH,IP,IEEE 802.11,ARP,SMTP,ICMP,DNS
correctSet #0 --> IGMP,IPX,IP,ICMP
correctSet #1 --> TLS,SSL,IPSec,SSH
correctSet #2 --> Ethernet,PPP,IEEE 802.11,ARP
correctSet #3 --> HTTP,FTP,SMTP,DNS
####################

Gold trophy

Analyzing the JS for score it’s possible to notice it gets incremented by 100 on correct answers:

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// Update score by 100 points
score += 100;

By modifying the score from DevTools and triggering a correct answer, I achieved the gold trophy: