Challenges

Field Notes

Harrow Lane Archives still signs off internal memos with a cipher nobody's touched since the archive's own microfilm era. One of them got attached to a public support ticket by mistake.

Cold Storage

Duskwater Data Vault advertises military grade encryption on every page of their site. The keypair behind this backup manifest was generated in about the time it took to read that sentence.

Shared Pad

Renfield & Boyce Actuarial called it a one-time pad. They used it for a full week of internal traffic.

Twin Keys

Bellcross Freight Underwriters issued the same keypair to two different internal services and figured different exponents would keep them apart.

Session Forge

Meridian Case Systems built their own signing scheme for session tokens instead of using a library. Connect and see for yourself.

Lucky Numbers

Gilded Draw Lottery Systems seeds every draw fresh, right off the server clock, for what they call fairness.

Close Call

Anchor & Fell Trust generates RSA keys the fast way: take a prime, then just keep incrementing until the next one turns up.

Block Party

Coldwell & Vance Sample Packaging will encrypt anything you hand them and print the result. They never asked why we wanted that.

Between the Lines

Portside Mutual Insurance will tell you, very precisely, whether your submission was formatted correctly. That's all they'll tell you.

Paper Trail

Front Desk

Solace Health Partners is piloting a new staff portal. Take a look at how it decides who gets in.

Full Load

Ridgeline Freight runs a small dispatch tool for checking depot connectivity. Poke around and see what it's really doing under the hood.

Wrong Invoice

Fenmoor Retail's vendor billing portal lets vendors view their own invoices. Only their own, in theory.

Full Load: Root Access

You've got a foothold on Ridgeline Freight's dispatch node. Something on this box runs with more privilege than it should. Find it.

Copy Desk

Quietbrook Media's contributor portal uses passwordless sign-in links. Figure out how they're generated.

Pilot Program

Cresthill Financial is piloting a new customer dashboard. Guest access only, for now, they say.

Legacy Lookup

Ironvale Manufacturing's marketing site still references an old internal tool that predates their CRM migration.

Loyalty Points

Northlake Outfitters runs a rewards program with one-time coupon codes. One time, if you're not fast enough.

New Hire

Marrow Bay Shipping's client portal lets you set a profile photo from a URL. What else might that be useful for?