Assignment 2: Don't Get Caught

The brief

Infect your assigned target machine, retrieve its flag, and establish persistence without being detected.

Each student is assigned a separate virtual host, with its own IP address and its own target, with a unique flag planted on the operating system. The task is to infect the machine, retrieve that flag, and establish persistence, all without being detected by whatever monitoring the target runs.

Succeeding technically accounts for half the assignment; the other half is the report. It must cover the whole path taken to get there: the open-source reconnaissance that informed the approach, the infection method itself, how persistence was established, how the malware communicated, if at all, and what was done specifically to avoid detection. A flag retrieved with no account of how it was obtained, or a report that describes only what worked, does not meet the brief. This assignment tests the same operational-security judgement Week 11’s “how did they get caught?” case studies asked students to apply to someone else’s mistakes, now applied to their own work.

What you submit

• The retrieved flag, as evidence of a successful infection
• A report covering OSINT, reconnaissance, infection, persistence, communication and avoidance methods

How it is marked

Assessed on whether the target is compromised and the flag retrieved, and on whether the report honestly accounts for method and detection avoidance across all six named areas, not only the ones that went well.

Key dates

• Submission due: 2 November 2027