Date: December 6, 2002 (scavenge hunt; Spring 2002 exercise also in archive) Location: UC Santa Barbara Format: Sequential task-based exercise Participants: Two internal UCSB teams (Alpha and Omega)
The 2002 security exercise was not a proper CTF — it was an exercise in a graduate security class taught at UC Santa Barbara in 2002.
The class was divided into two teams, Alpha and Omega, competing against each other in a treasure hunt. The goal was to break into a simulated (yet realistic) payroll system and perform a money transfer transaction. Each team had to complete a series of tasks (e.g., scan a network or break into a host) within a limited time window (e.g., 30 minutes).
Scoring: The first team to complete a task got the most points. If the other team also completed it within the time limit, it received a fraction of the points. If time ran out without completion, a cheat-sheet was provided so work could continue — but no points were awarded. Tasks were revealed only after both teams had completed the previous one.
The exercise was designed to generate a dataset of host-based and network events for research on multi-step attack correlation.
This was a sequential jeopardy-style exercise, not a classic attack-defense CTF. There was no service defense or inter-team exploitation. Teams raced through a pre-defined sequence of hacking tasks on a simulated corporate network containing a payroll system.
| Path | Contents | Size |
|---|---|---|
dumps/treasurehunt_dataset.tgz |
Network traffic and host audit data | ~6 GB |
dumps/img/ |
Exercise images | — |
Spring/ |
Spring 2002 exercise data | — |
ScavengeHunt/ |
December scavenge hunt variant | — |