Operation PACKET STORM

A Race Against Time

… back for one day only

Your Mission

A critical situation has emerged, and we're calling on the brightest technical minds to assist. We’ve intercepted a massive data dump - 1,000,000 packets of potentially hostile network traffic. Time is of the essence, and we need your expertise to rapidly process and analyse this data before it's too late.

Your mission is to develop a high-speed program in C, C++ or Rust to process the intercepted 1,000,000 packet capture (.pcap) file. Your analysis could be the key to preventing a major cyber attack on our nation's infrastructure.

Grab the capture here

Required Intelligence

Our security hangs in the balance, and every second counts. Our analysts need to know:

  1. The average packet size, and the total volume of data received during the attack

  2. Destination IPs ranked by frequency, in order to identify primary targets

  3. The number of packets sent with different transport layer protocols, to understand what mitigations would be most effective

You’ll need to make sure our operational support team can build your solution and verify your results, in order to gauge its operational suitability. Including documentation on expected usage and build instructions is a must.

Your Reward

We will invite the authors of the top five submissions to a mission debriefing at our headquarters on the 19th September 2024, and arrange for travel and a hotel in Cheltenham for you to stay the night before.

On the day, you’ll have the opportunity to meet some of our teams and Directors, and be taken out for lunch. You’ll also be fast-tracked to a single-stage interview for our software engineering graduate position starting September 2025, and have an opportunity to present your solution to a group of your peers on the day.

If you are successful and start a graduate role with us in September 2025, you will also receive an additional sign-on bonus of £2,000 in your first pay packet.

Entries will be assessed by an internal panel from CoreTech’s Software Engineering team for their speed, memory efficiency, design, portability, and innovative approach.

Terms and Conditions

  • The deadline for receipt of submissions is 08:00 on 26th August 2024. Successful applicants will be notified by 12th September

  • All submissions must be hosted using a public code-hosting service such as Github, and submitted using the submission form

  • All submissions must include a detailed README for building and verifying your solution

  • All submissions must build for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

  • Only one submission is permitted per candidate

  • You may use third-party packet processing libraries like libpcap

  • Submissions are restricted to those hoping to earn a Junior Consultant position at CoreTech in September 2025

  • Successful applicants must be available to attend our offices in Cheltenham on 19th September 2024

  • All decisions are final and at the sole discretion of CoreTech Security

  • Spotted an issue? Get in touch

Please note, due to sensitivity of the role, successful submission applicants must be British Citizens and willing to undergo extensive background checks to obtain a security clearance. Further details are given on the submission form.