The 2022 SANS Holiday Hack Challenge is a battle to recover the five golden rings stolen from Santa by Grinchum. This all takes place at the North Pole where Santa is hosting the 5th annual KringleCon, including talks from 11 leaders in the information security community. In addition to the talks, there are six objectives to solve, each consisting of multiple terminals and/or challenges. In solving all of these, I’ll recover the five rings, and in the process clear the magic that’s created Grinchum, turning him back into Smilegol. As usual, the challenges were interesting and set up in such a way that it was very beginner friendly, with lots of hints and talks to ensure that you learned something while solving.

SANS Holiday Hack Challenge 2022

Table of Contents

The 2022 Holiday Hack Challenge takes place at the North Pole. This year, the castle is snowed in, and the conference is driven underground into the North Pole Subterranean Labyrinth, consisting of tunnels and rooms where various rings are waiting to be recovered:

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More detailed maps are available in Appendix A: Exploring KringleCon.

Solutions for each of the 11 objectives and their associated terminal challenges can be found at the links below, or using the links at the bottom of each page to move to the previous or next.