The Story

From the very start, I begin my journey at a place where most journeys start, at the side of the New Jersey Turnpike near Exit 7A. I am immediately met by an elf named Jingle Ringford, who instructs me of my first challenge.

Shortly after, I see the entrance of the castle. Santa awaits in front to greet all of us, along with the three french hens. The castle seems to be in some sort of renovation, as evidenced by the sign out front stating the reonvations are performed by Richard T. Hall, or perhaps his nickname...Dick T. Hall? Shinny Upatree, Jewel Loggins, and Pepper Minstix are also there, with two more challenges:

The first Kiosk challenge awaits, Unescape TMux. This was needed to get Pepper's turtledove back, and he graciously informs me of a new "Santavator" in the castle that's acting funny.

Shinny Upatree's Kiosk was there too, as well as the second challenge, Investigate S3 Bucket!

Wandering around the castle I discover several Kiosks and challenges that I simply don't have access to. The one kiosk I did have access to was the Linux Primer Kiosk, hosted by Sugarplum Mary. Right after that is the next objective, Point-Of-Sale Password Recovery.

After completing that, I came to the front entrance and spoke to all of the Elves there. Many of them mention that Santa has not been himself lately, muttering things about staying frosty or whatever. I'm sure it's nothing!

Here is the santavator:

And inside the santavator:

Opening the panel of the controls brings me to my next Objective, Operating the Santavator

Finally I'm able to access the Workshop on the 1 1/2th floor:

The above picture was taken after I managed to open the door to the left, but the next challenge was to open the door to the workshop by way of Objective 5!

The result was a darkened room full of twists and turns:

Until I finally popped out the other side as...

What weird magic is this? And what would ISC2 have to say about this blatant disregard for nonrepudiation?

Heck with it, I now have full access as the big guy himself! And with great access comes great responsibility, but before I go making prank phone calls, I should first finish what I set out to do: access the Splunk Challenge in the great room! Without my big red suit I'm met with an "Access Denied" message, stating that only Santa and SOC elves are allowed to access it. Well who is Santa now???

The Splunk Challenge was used to determine the name of the adversary group that Santa feared would attack Kringlecon...and it was none other than the Lollipop Guild! This would explain the sudden appearance of many munchkins throughout the north pole.

Getting further into it, my next objective was up on the roof:

And there's Jack Frost! Though to be fair he's been seen hanging out around the castle in various places looking completely and totally trustworthy without a hint of suspicion around him, but still...very odd.

There was Wunorse Openslae, next to the CAN-Bus Investigation Kiosk, which was used as a primer to Solve the Sleigh's CAN-D-BUS Problem. Many elves suspected Jack Frost of sending malicious messages to the CAN bus of the sleigh, preventing it from operating. It was up to me to fix that.

While there was a kiosk and another challenge there, I decided to go in order and work my way towards the Broken Tag generator, which was located past the Broken Sort-O-Matic, and in the Wrapping Room:

I learned that I should probably speak to Holly Evergreen in the kitchen:

Two new kiosks to do! First, I'll fix Fitzy Shortstack's Modem-connected Tree that he has for some reason, then I'll work on Holly Evergreen's Redis Bug Hunt. Fitzy was muttering something about Santa acting weird and walking funny or something. I loosened my collar and started to head back to the Wrapping Room.

From there, I solved the eighth Objective, the Broken Tag Generator. Based on the result of the digital vandalization of the site by leaving his mark, I am now strongly suspecting Jack Frost of wrongdoings. But again, maybe I'm thinking too much into this.

The next challenge brought me back up to the roof where I finally worked on the Scapy Preper kiosk, and finally the ARP Shenanigans Challenge! This last challenge unveiled something awfully telling, notably the Land Trust Meeting Minutes in which Jack Frost was present for. Apparently Jack was the only one against the expansion of Kris Kringle's castle, stating that it would impose on his territory and claim that the North Pole is "The Frostiest Place on Earth!" We may have a motive now...

As Santa, I can access one more floor that I haven't been to before: The third floor: Santa's Office!

In there, Tinsel Upatree greets me but lets me know that he believes that the Naughty/Nice list blockchain may have been compromised, even though it validates cleanly! It shows that Jack Frost is the nicest person in the world by a large margin, something that doesn't seem right. It will require more investigation, but on the table I see the blockchain.dat file that I can use to further investigate. But first, I need to check out the Speaker UNPreparedness room, because Bushy Evergreen may have more info I can use.

I was able to finish the Speaker UNPrep kiosk in the Speaker Lobby, which gave me access to the actual Speaker UNPreparedness Room:

From there, I now had access to the Snowball Fight kiosk, which taught me a valuable lesson in computer randomization, as well as tipped me off to how the blockchain I had acquired was configured, or at least how the nonce was determined. Doing this challenge gave me enough of what I needed to begin work on Objective 11a: Naughty/Nice List with Blockchain Investigation Part 1!

And upon completing that, I moved on to finish Objective 11b: Naughty/Nice List with Blockchain Investigation Part 2!

This gave me enough to find out what Jack Frost did! ...now all I needed to do was to get to Santa's office as...not Santa. In order to revert back, I either had to go back in through the painting the way I came, or get spit out the side of the New Jersey Turnpike, not unlike a certain movie I've seen in the past.

I opted the cleaner in-through-the-painting way, and visited the dining room, where Ribb Bonbowford had an interesting challenge for me:

And upon completing the kiosk, Ribb mentions that I can probably try my hand at Javascript in order to bypass the Fingerprint Reader in the Santavator...

Doing so brings me to Santa's Office as me! I can enter the back room now to see:

The real santa has nothing but praise!

And with that, Christmas is saved yet again!