Best Creative Answer that is Technically Correct awarded (recorded as Ben Krüger)

I think this year I’ll have to write a little more about how it came about. Until then, you can access my solution as a Unity game here: https://quest.kringle.info/.

You can find the interactive, linked HTML-based solution here: 2025 SANS Holiday Hack Challenge.

To do this, I first created a cube in Blender with the exact dimensions that I had previously measured. Then I inserted a loop cut to create two compartments. I then applied inset face and then extrude region to each top face to create an empty area to store things. I then dragged the edges downwards to create a sloping side surface. And finally, I used the modifier add bevel (under generate) to create rounded edges.

I used a coarse setting for the slicing (0.4mm) to speed up the printing. For the infill, 10% is sufficient without any problems. The temperature and the build plate temperature were adjusted to the filament, in my case black PLA+.

I was very positively surprised by my first 3D print result. It is already fulfilling its purpose. More boxes will be printed in the future as well…

Best Creative Answer that is Technically Correct awarded (recorded as Ben K.)

In my fourth year, I wanted to go the extra mile. After acquiring a lot of technical skills in previous years (Python programming, web with Bootstrap – I felt a bit like a full stack developer in the meantime), I wanted to create something special. To do this, I familiarised myself with desktop publishing and, with the help of artificial intelligence for text support, submitted a local North Pole daily newspaper as a report. I am so proud to have won the Best Creative Answer that is Technically Correct award with this submission. My solution can be viewed and downloaded here:

You can find the interactive, linked HTML-based solution here: 2024 SANS Holiday Hack Challenge

Of course, I also want to share where I got the knowledge for this year. Ally Anderson runs her website Affinity Revolution here: https://courses.affinityrevolution.com/. I got the knowledge for my report mainly from the Affinity Publisher for Beginners course. Thanks, Ally!

Super Honorable Mention awarded (recorded as Darkander)

In the third year, I improved the reporting even further. Instead of individual Python scripts, I created a complete web application written in Python and based on Flask and Bootstrap. The web application stores the Markdown code in an SQLite database and takes care of the upload and storage of additional image files. It also indicates clearly which tasks have already been processed and allows reports to be generated in HTML or Markdown. The source code can be found on GitHub. You can find my web application here: https://kringle.info/.

You can find the interactive, linked HTML-based solution here: 2023 SANS Holiday Hack Challenge

I also use the SANS HHC to acquire new knowledge and use this knowledge in my respective solution. I owe the knowledge for 2023 to Michael Kennedy, his website TalkPython can be reached here: https://training.talkpython.fm/. In my case I used the course Building Data-Driven Web Apps with Flask and SQLAlchemy. Thank you very much, Michael!

Honorable Mention awarded (recorded as Ben [Darkander])

In the second year of my participation, I wanted to improve the report generation. As in the first year, I wrote my descriptions and solutions in Markdown. However, as the compilation and linking took a lot of time, I created Python scripts to do the work for me. The complete generated report for 2022 can be viewed and downloaded here:

You can find the interactive, linked HTML-based solution here: 2022 SANS Holiday Hack Challenge

What’s romance scam or love scam in a few words? People are finally trying to get money from you pretending love or disasters. This kind of attack is happening increasingly often on dating platforms and even (in my case) business platforms.

What does it look like? Have a look at these shortened, anonymized protocols (including some notes and hints from my side):

So what are the main indicators of a romance / love scam?

• The messages are getting emotional very quickly and very intensely. The people seem to be interested in your daily and private life
• The people seem to be located in another country or some place which is tough to visit
• The people are trying to raise sympathy by mentioning disasters or other (financial) pitfalls
• The images used are showing beautiful people trying to get attraction
• The people are asking for money or other benefits very quickly

What can you do if you experiencing something similar (and maybe some situation which is slightly more subtle than this one)?

• First, never trust anyone without any proof or another
• Never, never send private or personal data to those people (like your government ID, bank account numbers, etc.)
• Use the Google image reverse search for images, photos (very often images are taking from public profiles somewhere)

Is romance / love scam a crime?

• Fake profiles are no crime, but inform the platforms as soon as possible so these profiles can be deleted
• Create a log or screen shots from any conversation
• Using fake profiles for fraud is a crime indeed, if you are a victim, inform the police about your case and hand over all the information you got!!!

Let’s assume you already have a bucket called demobucket, and you can access it using the AWS CLI. Now we upload a basic HTML page (or any other file):

% cat index.html 
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>Hello World!</title>
    </head>
    <body>
Hello World!
    </body>
</html>

% strato s3 cp index.html s3://demobucket
upload: ./index.html to s3://demobucket/index.html 

The next step needs to be done only once for each bucket you want to make public. Please make sure you adjust the bucket name (in bold):

% strato s3api put-bucket-policy --bucket demobucket --policy "{
  \"Version\": \"2012-10-17\",
  \"Statement\": [
      {
          \"Sid\": \"PublicReadGetObject\",
          \"Effect\": \"Allow\",
          \"Principal\": \"*\",
          \"Action\": \"s3:GetObject\",
          \"Resource\": \"arn:aws:s3:::demobucket/*\"
      }
  ]
}"

Now you can reach your file publicly using the URLs https://s3.hidrive.strato.com/demobucket/index.html or https://demobucket.s3.hidrive.strato.com/index.html:

If you want to make your bucket privat again, just delete the policy:

% strato s3api delete-bucket-policy --bucket demobucket

Step 1: Download the AWS CLI using the link above for your system. Please follow the installation instructions and test the installation:

$ aws --version
aws-cli/2.4.25 Python/3.8.8 Linux/5.4.0 exe/x86_64.ubuntu.20 prompt/off

Step 2: Create a bucket using the HiDrive S3 console:

Step 3: Create an access key using the console:
Crucial: Write down/store the displayed access key somewhere. If you forget it, you need to create a new one (which is no problem).

Step 4: Configure the AWI CLI using the newly created access key:
Note: don’t change the default region to another value than eu-central-1!

$ aws configure
AWS Access Key ID [None]: <value>
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: <value>
Default region name [None]: eu-central-1
Default output format [None]: 

Step 5: Make your life a little easier and set an alias as following (so you don’t need to enter the full command each time):

$ alias strato="aws --endpoint-url https://s3.hidrive.strato.com"

Step 6: Now you’re ready to use the AWS CLI with your Strato HiDrive S3:

$ strato s3api list-buckets
{
    "Buckets": [
        {
            "Name": "demobucket",
            "CreationDate": "2022-03-13T19:59:54.616000+00:00"
        }
    ],
    "Owner": {
        "ID": "xyz"
    }
}

$ strato s3 cp file.txt s3://demobucket
upload: ./file.txt to s3://demobucket/file.txt    

$ strato s3 ls s3://demobucket
2022-03-13 21:19:37          5 file.txt

$ strato s3 cp s3://demobucket/file.txt .
download: s3://demobucket/file.txt to ./file.txt   

$ strato s3 rm s3://demobucket/file.txt 
delete: s3://demobucket/file.txt

Super Honorable Mention awarded (recorded as Ben Krueger)

2021 was the first year I took part. I was primarily focused on the challenges and their solution. To create a report, I decided to use Markdown (GitHub-flavoured Markdown), as I thought it was perfect due to the simple language and syntax highlighting. I then exported the complete report to PDF format and made it available to view and download here:

You can find the interactive, linked HTML-based solution here: 2021 SANS Holiday Hack Challenge