Welcome

Introduction

This was my second year going through the Holiday Hack Challenge and I must say, I still have much to learn. But nothing teaches you more than experience and nothing helps cement what you've learned than figuring out how to explain it like a write-up or walkthrough. So here we go: Chacho's 2024 fumblings through snowball fights, KQL queries, PowerShell scripting, ransomware, and much more.

Structure

We are taken through the journey this year in the form of a play, which is brilliant for a couple of reasons. It aligns well with being able to move through the story in a temporal way that mirrors the release of each installment.

Prologue

We begin where we left off, on the Geese Islands where everyone is packing up to move back to the North Pole. This is a great intro to the environment and storyline.

Act I

Arriving back at the North Pole, we get wind that not all is going smoothly and the rifts of years prior may be rearing their ugly heads.

Act II

A clear devolution has taken place and the Great Elf Conflict is well underway.

Act III

Santa returns and it is time to clean up/undo the havoc that has been wreaked.

Biggest Lessons Learned

What everyone learns from going through this process is different. For me, I have no experience in coding so learning the importance of error handling to gain insights as to what is going on was an important takeaway.

PowerShell script exposure was very new and I hope to delve more into that at some point.

Screenshots as I go ended up being much more helpful than waiting until the end for the write up.

When taking notes, be clear about from where the information/files came. Were they given in a hint, found in the game, awarded at a challenge's completion, the result of running a tool, created by me? When a file/tool ends up working, note that it was helpful so unhelpful methods can be filtered out more easily later.

Completing many of the challenges was easier than last year, but I still required several nudges from the amazing community on the Discord channels. Big thanks to @El_Chapalero, @elakamarcus, @i81b4u, @pahtzo, @j3ppah, @Book Reader.