Josh Galvez
Provides josh Galvez and evaluates key implications for security practitioners.
Summary
Context
Josh Galvez recaps SaintCon Hackers' Challenge after nearly retiring from eight years running it; Rigel and Santiago helped staff it, and she stayed on energized by player interaction.
Participation stats
372 registered users, 264 players with at least one solve, 68 challenges, no Hacker Jeopardy this year. Most solves: Filter It; hardest: Burn the Bridge (one solver). Top solvers included Talk Security and Lego Clones, though solve count does not equal points.
Difficulty and infrastructure
About 50% solved a full 10 puzzles; she notes too few beginner puzzles. Crypto Means Gibberish drew 363 wrong answers; one player made 267 wrong guesses (~41% correct overall). AWS hosted 208 instances, dozens of CNAMEs, 100MB+ S3 objects, and 9,000+ unique logged items; Azure and Lambda challenges are planned next year.
Authors and walkthrough
Contributors included Rigel, Santiago, Specter (OT/ICS), Plum (RE), Scotty, and community groups. She demos a pre-con coin puzzle using Braille hints, Atbash, columnar transposition, and XOR—with a CyberChef nibble-boundary gotcha.
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