We ran the Project 2 contest at Defcon 21, August 1-4, 2013. The contest was designed to appeal to beginners, ramping up to puzzles which would intrigue the most skilled hackers.
We had 169 teams register, with 125 teams scoring points. Given that teams may have consisted of multiple players, this made Project 2 one of the largest contests at Defcon. The previous year, Project 2 had 58 scoring teams which means the contest had more than doubled in size.
pwnies scored themselves a Bus Pirate after winning the contest. The competition was fierce this year, even pro-CTFer’s took part in our puzzles.
A new experience for Project 2 this year were attendees attacking our infrastructure. Some of the team names introduced garbage in the scoreboard. There were some crazy Australians that found a hilarious directory traversal in the console.
And again, nearly every puzzle was solved this year! This means we are going to have to do a lot of work in the next 12 months. Planning for 2014 started the week after DC21, so prepare yourself for new puzzles in some interesting subjects in 2014.