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Introduction

Introduction Welcome to my solution to the 2023 edition of the SANS Holiday Hack Challenge. For me, this is year 12 of completing this challenge. It is always the event that kicks off my holiday season. This year's challenge takes us to the Geese Islands for KringleCon 6 (Geese a Lei-ing) and looks to host some very cool challenges related to AI, Space Systems, Cloud Security, Web App Security, and Phishing Analysis. According to some teaser posts, there will also be some physical style challenges like lock picking! This takes me back HHC 2019. Remember the Optical Decoding of Keys challenge where we had to take an image of a key, decode the bitting values, and create a working copy of a key? These types of challenges are really cool and unique to Holiday Hack. Check out my solutions on this page and if you have any comments or questions, message me on Twitter, Discord, or email.

Good Luck!

	Cody Travis
	cwtravis@gmail.com
	@cwtravis1

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Storyline

StoryLine

ChatNPT is being used more and more at the North Pole and it starts to influence Santa. Maybe a holiday season on the beach isn't a bad idea. ChatNPT seems to be pushing the Geese Islands hard on every while at the same time introducing vulnerabilities and subtle problems.

Alabaster is targeted by phishing attacks. Wombley Cube was recruited as a double agent. And who was the malicious entity behind ChatNPT's motives? It was Jack Frost!

He recruited Wombley Cube to help run the Satellite Ground Station while he controlled things from his geostationary satellite. He had a plan he kept secret even to Wombley. He wanted to launch a missile at the Geese Islands and take care of Santa and the elves for good.

Apparently geostationary satellites only work above the equator.

Luckily we were able to redirect Jacks missle to the sun, crash Jack's escape pod, and send him back to his home planet forever.

You've done it! You've saved me and my sleigh from Jack Frost's dastardly plan!

I must admit, it's astonishing the lengths Jack will go to in order to try and stop the holiday season.

Even after being banished from Earth, he managed to create an AI to social engineer us into moving our holiday operations to the Geese Islands, putting us right in the path of his satellite.

And to think he even recruited one of my dear elves... I never saw that coming. Oh, Wombley...

But thanks to your incredible efforts, we've proof that Jack violated his parole, and the chances of him interfering with the holidays ever again are all but impossible!

I can't thank you enough for your help in protecting the magic and joy of this special time of year.

I'd like to wish you a most wonderful holiday season, no matter where you may be on Earth or what the weather is like.

Keep that holiday spirit alive, my friend, and remember: a little change now and then can lead to something magical!

Ho ho ho, happy holidays!