Announcing the Second FLARE On Challenge

https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2015/07/announcing_the_secon.html

The FireEye Labs Advanced Reverse Engineering (FLARE) team is hosting its second annual CTF-style challenge for all reverse engineers, malware analysts, and security professionals.

The first FLARE On Challenge was a huge success with over 7,000 participants and 226 winners! If you missed it last year, we invite you to compete and test your skills again. The challenge runs the gamut of skills we believe are necessary to succeed on the FLARE team. We invite everyone who is interested to solve the challenge and get their just reward!

 

The puzzles were developed by many different members of the FLARE team and lead by Nick Harbour. Nick is an expert in reverse engineering and computer forensics, with a specialty in anti-disassembly techniques. Nick has created industry security tools such as Red Curtain, dcfldd, IOCe, tcpxtract, and pe-scrambler. He also wrote Chapter 15 of Practical Malware Analysis.

The puzzles start with basic skills and escalate quickly to more difficult reversing tasks. At FLARE we have to deal with whatever challenges come our way, so the challenge reflects this. If you take on the challenge you might see puzzles involving Packers, Mobile platforms, steganography, obfuscated .NET, and so on.
 

The Second FLARE On Challenge will open at July 28, 2015 20:00EDT and close on Sept. 8, 2015 20:00EDT. You can finish any time before Sept. 8 to qualify for a prize.
 

Nick is hosting a webinar on Wednesday, July 29, to help kick off your challenge experience.

After completing the final challenge, you’ll be contacted by a FLARE team member. Once you provide a mailing address we’ll ship you your prize. Last year, the prize was a coin and this year we have something new and special for the winners ;). The full details can be found at: www.flare-on.com.
 

So on behalf of the FLARE team, I say Happy Reversing!