Advent of Cyber 2023 Winners Announced!

In this year’s Advent of Cyber, Elf McSkidy needed your help gathering evidence to prove who was behind a series of sabotage attacks, with daily challenges covering Penetration Testing, Security Operations, Security Engineering, Digital Forensics, Incident Response, Machine Learning, and Malware Analysis.

Featuring 24 cyber security tasks leading up to Christmas, our fourth consecutive Advent of Cyber was comprised of daily tasks to help you break into cyber. Best of all, you could win epic prizes valued over $50,000!

All you had to do was participate in the daily tasks to be automatically entered in the draw. You bagged an extra raffle ticket to our ultimate prize draw for each question you answered correctly! Winners for all prizes have been calculated at random using the pool of raffle tickets.

Before we get to the exciting bit, let’s remind ourselves of the epic prizes up for grabs:

Steam Deck
Razer Basilisk V3 Pro + Mouse Dock Pro Bundle
AirPods Pro Gen 2
SITMOD Gaming / Computing Chair
Monomi Electric Standing Desk
HP Pavilion Tower PC
CompTIA Security+ Exam (Complete Bundle)
THM Subscription (1 Month)
THM Subscription (3 Months)
THM Subscription (6 Months)
THM Subscription (12 Months)
TryHackMe Swag Gift Cards ($10)
TryHackMe Swag Gift Cards ($20)
TryHackMe Swag Gift Cards ($50)
AWS Training (3-Month Access)
Meta Quest 3
KOORUI Ultra Wide Curved Monitor
Bose QuietComfort 45 Noise-Cancelling Headphones

Please note that all winners will be contacted in due course. We aim to work as quick as we can to arrange delivery! For more information, check out our prize terms and conditions.

UPDATE: After some investigation, TryHackMe found a few prize winners had cheated and illegitimately won prizes. These cheaters have been identified, their prizes have been removed, and new winners have been chosen. We apologise for any inconvenience and thank everyone who brought this to our attention to uphold the integrity of the event and prize winners.

Advent of Cyber Winners

Steam Deck

jakub.hrabovsky1 | technosavage | Baphometh | Megashad

Razer Basilisk V3 Pro + Mouse Dock Pro Bundle

AirPods Pro Gen 2

croosti | Tozaki5525 | remad

SITMOD Gaming / Computing Chair

Monomi Electric Standing Desk

H3llscr3am | tsuyoshi | Kiosec | UnknownBeatch | Psychoza

HP Pavilion Tower PC

MihuMihh | petits | Qbeck | stegdag | CyberForceuser

CompTIA Security+ Exam (Complete Bundle)

THM Subscription (1 Month)

THM Subscription (3 Months)

THM Subscription (6 Months)

THM Subscription (12 Months)

TryHackMe Swag Gift Cards ($10)

TryHackMe Swag Gift Cards ($20)

TryHackMe Swag Gift Cards ($50)

AWS Training (3-Month Access)

AlexisMaciel | alpha.omega | Luccor | malakali | Evercraze

Meta Quest 3

AswinDasC | emelay

KOORUI Ultra Wide Curved Monitor

Nasar | jokeman | cr3pt | asmiral | klintk

Bose QuietComfort 45 Noise-Cancelling Headphones

Iicrazyjr | Qia | SerhiiD

Advent of Cyber ‘Side Quest’ Winners

As part of this year's Advent of Cyber, we created a side quest for our most advanced users. The side quest challenges ranged from hard to insane difficulties and were designed for those of you who wanted something more complex than the main AoC track. While we expected some users to participate, the reception we received was overwhelmingly positive and greatly exceeded our expectations. A huge thank you to all of you for participating! Here's a quick recap of the event:

A total of 3694 users joined the side quest to help the Yeti
1208 completed at least one of the SQ challenges
21 users got the coveted SNOW/OFF badge for completing ALL challenges
The phrase "no hints" was used more than 1000 times in our Discord channel for the event
More than a dozen memes were created in the process
At least six different bypasses to the intended solutions were found, two of which were 0-day vulnerabilities!

Congratulations to the side quest winner, Aquinas, for being the first to complete all challenges. The competition was tough, having moo in second place and sending their last flag just 5 minutes later. The third place goes to jaxafed, who followed them closely.

We hope you enjoyed the challenges as much as we enjoyed creating them. It was great to see you all participating, assembling teams and putting so much effort into helping the Yeti succeed in his plan. Your feedback is also important to keep improving the event, so remember to fill in the feedback survey if you participated.

Please note that the Side Quest was a separate event from Advent of Cyber, meaning that completing tasks from the Side Quest will not increase your chances of winning from the main Advent of Cyber $50,000 prize draw. Completing the Side Quest was entirely optional and just for fun!

Single challenge winners

For each of the Side Quests, the first three winners to complete them receive a 3-month TryHackMe Premium subscription voucher and a voucher to purchase a t-shirt from our swag store.

Side Quest main winner

The first user to solve all four challenges, submit the flags in task 4 of this room, and complete this room will receive a one-year TryHackMe Premium subscription voucher, a voucher to purchase a t-shirt from our swag store, and the choice of one of the following prizes:

Steam Deck ($399)
Razer Basilisk V3 Pro + Mouse Dock Pro Bundle ($199)
AirPods Pro Gen 2 ($249)
SITMOD Gaming / Computing Chair ($179)
Monomi Electric Standing Desk ($204.99)
Meta Quest 3 ($585)
KOORUI Ultra Wide Curved Monitor ($499)
HP Pavilion Tower PC ($759.99)
Bose QuietComfort 45 Noise-Cancelling Headphones ($329)
CompTIA Security+ Exam (Complete Bundle) ($1,080)

Winner: Aquinas

Side Quest raffle winners

Users who complete the Side Quest before 28th December will enter a Side Quest Raffle, with five winners picked at random. Prizes include a 6-month TryHackMe Premium subscription voucher and a voucher to purchase a t-shirt from our swag store.

Winners: secai | mnemonicdaemon | ArthurWho | NfinityParad0x | Hackerman

See you next year!