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The Haunted Night Shift

One night. One haunted estate. Five hours after the last user logs off, something starts logging in.

At 23:00 UTC on Hallowe'en the lights go out across the Northwind estate and the night shift is you. A knock at the door, something moving in the attic, a séance in the identity vault, whispers on the wire — work the trail back to whatever put on the caretaker's face, before the clock strikes three.

Gun

Saturday, October 31 at 11:00 PM UTC

Last bell

Sunday, November 1 at 3:00 AM UTC

On the board

5 hauntings · 1250 points

Put your name down

Sign up, then click the link in your confirmation email — the host holds the gun until the whole field is confirmed. Solo entries are welcome; teams up to four. Names close Saturday, October 31 at 10:45 PM UTC.

Sign in to take your place Haunted leaderboard /ctf/halloween
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The trail

Five hauntings, released in order. Each one unlocks the next.

  1. 1. The knock at the door 100 pts

    An invoice nobody ordered, opened by somebody who should have known better.

  2. 2. Something in the attic 200 pts

    The process list swears the house is empty. The memory image disagrees.

  3. 3. Séance in the vault 250 pts

    Somebody minted themselves a key at midnight and signed the register in someone else's hand.

  4. 4. Whispers on the wire 300 pts

    A beacon so polite you would mistake it for housekeeping traffic.

  5. 5. The unmasking 400 pts

    Pull the mask off. Name the caretaker who was never on the payroll.

The October shelf

Four hauntings you can work any night of the season. Real detections underneath the ghost story — and, as ever, nothing on these hosts is real.

  • Haunted: The Console That Whispers Back

    An analyst left three years ago. Her account never stopped signing in.

    A workstation on the night range keeps signing in as an analyst who left three years ago. Follow the auth log into her account, exhume how the thing got in, and lay each habit to rest: the passphrase, the missing second factor, the unreported phish, the unpatched package.

    linuxbeginner5 stages

    Take the night shift
  • Haunted: The Thirteenth Guest

    Twelve people badged in this morning. Thirteen sessions are open on the floor.

    Twelve badges opened the office this morning and thirteen interactive sessions are live on the floor. Follow the extra session back through the RDP logs, find the account that walked in on somebody else's token, and name the guest.

    windowsintermediate5 stages

    Take the night shift
  • Haunted: The Pumpkin Patch Beacon

    Forty smart plugs light the car park orange. One of them is talking to Latvia.

    Facilities lit the car park with forty orange smart plugs for the season. One of them holds a socket open to a host in Riga every 300 seconds. Work the packet capture and the DHCP lease table until you can name the plug and the callback.

    linuxintermediate5 stages

    Take the night shift
  • Haunted: All Hallows' Payroll

    Payroll ran at midnight on the 31st. It paid four people who died in 2019.

    The midnight payroll run on 31 October paid four employees who left the company in 2019, and the finance share came back the next morning renamed and unreadable. Reconstruct the run, find the scheduled task that resurrected the leavers, and recover the share from the snapshot that survived.

    windowsadvanced5 stages

    Take the night shift

Every host, flag and packet in the Haunted Night Shift is simulated inside your browser. Nothing real executes and nothing leaves the range.