Hacking school

Most challenge sites have a ranking, where people can compare themselves with other challengers. It is a great source of motivation, but also on the other hand, the root of all evil. Many people have been competing dishonestly by trading solutions, begging for hints and cheating. A true challenger would not want to see that other side of the challenger world. And as a result, a group of topgamers, among which relee, rayden5, bb and chrisi, worked together and finished a cool project - the hacking school.

The main purpose of the hacking school was to create an educational challenge site where people can learn and grow their skills, and especially, cheating and solution trading are prevented. The challenges are reviewed by the "group leaders" for quality assurance, so that only good ones are published. The solutions are different for each user, and all solution attempts are monitored, so that "swapping answers" will not work.

Hacking school was built over 2 years, but in the end for an unknown reason only a framework was released. The framework was hosted at http://www.hacking-school.org, but for an unknown reason it is down for now. You can still have an overview of the site from the Wayback Machine, and if you want a copy of the framework, feel free to contact me.

Mod-x

Hey guys,

Today's hot challenge site is Mod-x at http://www.mod-x.co.uk. Unlike other challenge sites, Mod-x has a unique story line behind it. You are one of the Mod-x agents, the elite team fighting against the evil forces in the cyberspace.

Most tasks involve reversing, code breaking and penetrating other systems. Although the game is fictional, you need real skills in order to complete the tasks and move forward.

Beside the main game, Mod-x also hosts 2 other games: the omega project and disavowed.net. They are also quite interesting.

Give it a try and see how far you can go!