Registration for NeoQUEST-2015: "Treasures of Masons" is open

March 10th starts the online stage of the annual hacker competition NeoQUEST-2015! The competition will last a week, from 10 to 17 March. This time the participants will have to break their heads over the mysterious secrets of the masons and find their treasures (alas, virtual). However, the prizes for the riches found are the most real. The winners are invited to the on-site stage of the summer NeoQUEST-2015 in St. Petersburg, where they will be able to compete for the main prize that has already become traditional - the opportunity to go to one of the international conferences on cybersecurity!



Registration is open here . Under the cut - about the technical orientation of the NeoQUEST tasks, the unexpected "highlight" of 2015, the order of the tasks and the prizes.

Who else does not know what NeoQUEST is?

NeoQUEST is a cybersecurity competition for individual participants, traditionally taking place in two stages: an online stage and a full-time stage.

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Anyone can take part in the online stage, just register on the event website. For the remote passage of various IS tasks, points are awarded, and participants receive cool prizes, and the best of them are the most important thing: an invitation to the NeoQUEST face-to-face tour held in St. Petersburg during the white nights season ( here is an analysis of the NeoQUEST-2015 live tour tasks).



The confrontation NeoQUEST is an event conference on cybersecurity that includes:

• events for guests:
  
  
  • interesting reports from the practice of information security
  • exciting and fun contests
  • online quiz "Examination on IB"
  • workshops on cybersecurity (for example, at the on-site stage NeoQUEST-2014 a cold-boot attack was demonstrated using liquid nitrogen, you can see the photos here ).
• hackquest for the winners of the online stage, during which they compete for 8 hours in the hackquest (pass information security tasks) in real-time mode.

At the end of the evening, the competition is summed up - the winners are awarded with gifts, and the participant who takes the first place also receives the main prize: a trip to one of the international hacker conferences on information security!

Tasks for every taste

In NeoQUEST-2015 there will be a variety of tasks of varying complexity, so that each participant will be able to choose a task for himself! Let's slightly open the veil of secrecy and hint at what participants should prepare for.

• Steganography - a task for the most attentive! Look in all eyes, maybe something is not what it seems?
• Game "tag" on Android with a "double bottom"
• Text from obscure characters, deciphering which, you can get not only the key, but also a hint to the second part of the task - for cryptanalysis
• Actually, cryptanalysis, which consists in finding the key for the corresponding pairs of open and encrypted texts
• Forensic - what kind of secret data did a person store on a computer? And where could the key to the cryptocontainer go?
• Old School - QEMU and Solaris

Tasks, as always, can be completed in any order. Points for the completed task are traditionally awarded in accordance with the dynamic scale: the more participants passed the task, the less points will be awarded for it, and vice versa. Also, the earlier the participant passed the task - the more points he gets!



In addition to the prizes, other bonuses also rely on the best participants of NeoQUEST: their success in competition is taken into account when enrolling in the magistracy and postgraduate studies at the Cyber ​​Security Division of St. Petersburg Polytechnic University.

AV1ct0r does not pretend to the treasures of the masons!

At NeoQUEST-2015, a special surprise awaits participants: the multiple winner of NeoQUEST AV1ct0r will not participate in the treasure hunt! This time, he takes part in NeoQUEST from an atypical side: using his vast experience of participating in hack quests, he prepared several interesting tasks that will also be included in the quest.

Join the society of free masons!

You can read about the tasks of the online stages of previous years in Habrablog , in particular, the analysis of tasks for the last 2 years - here and here .







For all questions related to NeoQUEST, write to support@neoquest.ru. Follow the quest and find out the latest news in our twitter and on the official website .

Go ahead, search for treasure!