Flare-On 8 Challenge Solutions

Written by: Nick Harbour

This year’s Flare-On Challenge will conclude with the most finishers we’ve ever had. We’re going to need to make more prizes because the contestants blew this one out of the water. Each of those approximately 340 finishers will receive this truly epic belt buckle. We plan to begin shipping late next month.

We would like to thank the challenge authors individually for their great puzzles and solutions.

1. credchecker – Nick Harbour (@nickharbour)
2. known – Eamon Walsh
3. Antioch – Eamon Walsh
4. My Aquatic Life – James T. Bennett (@jtbennettjr)
5. FLARE Linux VM - Ana María Martínez Gómez (@anamma_06)
6. PetTheKitty – Blaine Stancill (@MalwareMechanic)
7. spel – Mortiz Raabe (@m_r_tz)
8. beelogin – Tobias Krueger (@Mr_Jon3s)
9. evil – Paul Tarter (@Hefrpidge), Raymond Leong, Chuong Dong (@cPeterr)
10. wizardcult – Christopher Gardner (@t00manybananas)

This year’s Flare-On Challenge welcomed 4,578 registered users, with 3,727 of them solving at least one challenge. The first challenge this year was perhaps the easiest it has ever been, but we encourage those roughly 800 people who didn’t make it to the scoreboard to keep at it and try again next year! We will dive into the stats in detail, but this year there will be a purge of some “winners” that have been identified as possibly cheating. Check the Flare-On website later for final statistics and honor roll taking this into account.

Here's a list of the Flare-On 8 Challenge finishers by country. The U.S. continues to be at the top, with Vietnam jumping from seventh place last year to first runner up this year. Singapore and Russia continue to be strong, only dropping one spot each over last year.

All the binaries from this year’s challenge are now posted on the Flare-On website. Here are the solutions written by each challenge author:

1. SOLUTION #1
2. SOLUTION #2
3. SOLUTION #3
4. SOLUTION #4
5. SOLUTION #5
6. SOLUTION #6
7. SOLUTION #7
8. SOLUTION #8
9. SOLUTION #9
10. SOLUTION #10