I thought I'd take a break from posting stories that come across my RSS feed to let people know about an upcoming Hack-A-Thon/CTF event that OffSec is running next weekend.

I'm not really sure what the challenges will entail, since I'm not eligible for any of the prizes I haven't been paying much attention to info about it at all. I do know that in order to compete you will have to have an active PG Practice subscription, which is $19 USD/mo, more info is here. I don't really like that they're requiring people to already have a paid subscription to compete, but it's their ecosystem and their rules.

There are three different tiers you can compete in, a PEN-300 tier, an EXP-301 tier, and an PEN-200 tier. The 1st prize for each tier is a year long LearnOne subscription to the tier course, 2nd place is a 90 day course subscription to the tier course, and 3rd place is a 90 day subscription to the PG Practice environment.

While SANS is the king of wildly expensive courses, the OffSec subscriptions definitely aren't cheap either, especially if you're self-paying. I get the irony of making people pay for entry into a contest where they might win a subscription they otherwise couldn't afford, but it's better than nothing I guess.