Holiday Hack 2025: Orientation
Introduction
I start the game in a train car with Lynn Schifano:
There’s a familiar Cranberry Pi terminal like previous years, but I’m not able to interact with it yet. I’ll talk to Lynn:
Lynn Schifano
Welcome to the 2025 SANS Holiday Hack Challenge! We’re on a train heading… NOT to the North Pole, but instead to The Neighborhood. Your cybersecurity skills are needed there this year! I’m here to help orient you to this year’s exciting challenge.
I’m the Chief of Staff at Counter Hack, making sure the right people are doing the right thing at the right place at the right time – Herding cats, in other words.
I love sports, especially college basketball. My favorite teams are Monmouth University, Louisville, and Syracuse.
I’m a Queens Girl living my best life at the beautiful Jersey Shore.
I’m a proud Mom of three and Grandma of one (so far!! 🙏).
Hey, think you can give this terminal a try? Just click on it and follow the instructions.
Chat with Lynn Schifano
Congratulations! You spoke with Lynn Schifano!
First Terminal
Now the first terminal will open up. It’s just to make sure I can navigate the terminal popups:
Entering “answer” and hitting enter in the top half of the terminal solves the challenge, and unlocks my badge.
Holiday Hack Orientation
Congratulations! You have completed the Holiday Hack Orientation challenge!
Game
World Navigation
Lynn offers congratulations:
Lynn Schifano
Great work! Please, hop off the train and explore the neighborhood.
We’re so glad to have you here!
Oh, one more thing! You can press Q and E to rotate the map around. It gives you a nice semi-3D view of the area - really helps when you need to look around buildings and objects. Pretty neat, right? Give it a spin!
There’s now a portal on the map, visible by the yellow glow:
Using the Q and E buttons I can more fully see the train:
Despite the fact that the train is still moving, I can walk out that door into the neighborhood.
Badge
The badge, represented as a snowball at my avatar’s neck, is similar to past years, with a few updates:
The “Home” link has a link to the scoreboard, as well as the option to play in “Traditional” or “CTF Style”. Traditional involves walking around the world as in previous challenges. “CTF Style” offers a chance to complete the objectives without walking around the world, providing all the challenges / terminals / files via the badge.
The Map section has a map of the neighborhood:
Once I visit a building, it turns green on the map and I can click it here to transport directly into it.
The rest of the badge is straight forward. I’ll find objectives in “Objectives”, conversations I’ve had with NPCs in “Conversations”, unlocked hints in “Hints”, and completed achievements in “Achievements”.