The challenge is available on https://incident-response-challenge.com/ and is open to anyone willing to test his or her investigation skills, between April 21st and May 15th.
What's more interesting is that there's a USD 5000 prize for the first-place winner of the challenge.
Forensic investigation is at the core of any IR processes and provides the critical path from the initial stage of suspicion or limited attack view to the concrete and actionable knowledge on the attack's root cause and the impact that is essential for recovery and restore operations.
The challenge of the incident responder is to identify and collect the scattered traces the attackers have left them and connect the dots to understand the how, what, and where of the attacks.
As cyberattacks increase in scope and sophistication, the skills of IR professionals are rapidly rising in demand. This demand is, in fact, so high that there is a severe global shortage in such professionals.
This is in part due to the proliferation of attacks but also to the fact that forensic investigation is more of fine art than a commoditized line of trade, and both talent and creativity play a significant role in building a high edge incident responder.
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| The 25 IR Challenges |
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| An example of one challenge |
The Incident Response Challenge is built and designed with precisely these talent and creativity in mind. It includes 25 challenges in increasing difficulty level, all inspired from real-life scenarios that compel the participant to go beyond the textbook solution and think outside of the box.
"While Capture the Flag challenges that test hacking capabilities are common, there has never been a publicly available test for IR related forensic investigation," says Eyal Gruner, CEO, and Co-Founder of Cynet.
"In this challenge, anyone can try their hand, starting from the first challenge and proceeding to the other increasingly difficult IR challenges. We welcome all participants and will reward the most accomplished with recognition and a certificate of completion."
These are the Incident Response Challenge terms and conditions:
- Sign up as a participant in the Incident Response Challenge website.
- Start solving the challenges – each challenge comprises a story, question, and files to download and examine to answer it.
- Time matters! The scoring algorithm calculates a score based on the number of correct answers and the time it took to solve each question.
- The score is made known to the participant after completing all 25 challenges.
- You are limited to one entry. Anyone who enters more than once will be disqualified.
- The winner will be announced 72 hours after the competition closes on May 15th.
Are you a hands-on forensic researcher, SOC analyst, or malware analyzer? Go to https://incident-response-challenge.com/, get your hands dirty, and beat your peers to get the first prize!
