Sans Holiday Hack Challenge 2025 - Introduction

Foreword

The SANS Holiday Hack Challenge is often described as a game, but it is better understood as a guided walk through how security systems actually fail. Each objective is deliberately scoped, self-contained, and approachable, yet designed to surface the same patterns that appear in real environments: misplaced trust, misunderstood protocols, weak assumptions, and small decisions with outsized impact.

This write-up follows the challenge from start to finish, not as a speed run or a puzzle walkthrough, but as an exercise in disciplined analysis. The focus is on understanding why each task exists and what it is meant to teach, rather than simply how to complete it. Many of the problems require restraint as much as action—knowing where to look, what to ignore, and when not to push further.

Taken as a whole, the challenge mirrors day-to-day security work more closely than it might first appear. Progress comes from observation, careful reasoning, and respect for boundaries, not from flashy exploits. That is what this foreword, and the write-up that follows, aims to reflect. — Roger C.B. Johnsen

The Story

Way back in 2015, the mysterious Atnas Corporation almost ruined the entire holiday season through their nefarious Gnome In Your Home plot. Their villainy centered upon convincing parents to purchase little Gnome dolls that played joyful holiday songs to their children. With Gnome sales topping two million units, a blitz of Atnas Corp advertisements encouraged parents to move their Gnomes around the house daily so that their children could hunt for them in a fun little game. Little did parents know that these Gnomes were snooping IoT devices with a camera and wireless internet access, furtively sending photos to burglars who would rob their houses of their treasures en masse on Christmas Eve, 2015. The incredible efforts of SANS Holiday Hack investigators around the world foiled the foul plot, exposing the criminal mastermind behind Atlas Corp: Cindy Lou Who, age 62.

But those old Gnomes didn’t disappear. They lay discarded, gathering dust on shelves, in attics, and among other forgotten places throughout the world. Until now. There must have been some magic in those Gnomes, because, due to some unseen spark, some haunting hocus pocus, the Gnomes have quickened and are now walking among us! We now return with the Counter Hack Crew to the Duke Dosis neighborhood as the Holiday Season 2025 unfolds.

The City Map

This is the map over the gameworld we are to play in: