Red is Dead - Network Discovery Challenge

Challenge Overview

Welcome to Red is Dead, a network discovery and data extraction challenge! You have been given access to a target environment. Your mission is to explore the network, discover running services, and extract hidden information to find the flag.

Learning Objectives

• Network reconnaissance and service discovery
• Database forensics and data extraction
• Working with various data encoding methods
• Understanding data persistence and recovery

Challenge Details

You have been provided with access to a target environment. Your mission is to:

1. Perform network reconnaissance to discover running services
2. Identify and connect to discovered services
3. Explore the data structures and contents
4. Find hidden data and encoded information
5. Decode the information to reveal the flag

Technical Background

In real-world penetration testing, you often encounter various services running on target systems. Understanding how to discover, connect to, and analyze these services is crucial for successful security assessments. This challenge simulates such a scenario where you need to identify and exploit exposed services.

Required Skills

• Network scanning and service discovery
• Database connection and analysis
• Knowledge of data encoding and decoding
• Ability to analyze data structures

Getting Started

1. Start by exploring the target environment
2. Identify what services are running
3. Connect to discovered services
4. Look for hidden data in various data structures
5. Decode any encoded information you find

Tips

• Common services run on standard ports
• Look for patterns in the data structure
• Some data might be encoded or compressed
• Check for data in different databases or collections

Success Criteria

You will know you've solved the challenge when:

• You've successfully discovered and connected to the target service
• You've found and decoded the hidden flag
• You've submitted the complete decoded flag