FireflyHacker's CCDC Experience

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 04:07:05 +0000

I love the competition and I am a firm believer in the open sharing of knowledge and education.

My philosophy was that if you throw 30 students in the deep end and 8 of them figure out how to swim you will have a good team ready to go. The time frame is extremely tight to learn an insane amount of new technologies, strategies and the “meta” of the competition. This is (roughly) how our weeks we structured throughout the year.

How to get started learning Infra with a Homelab

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 22:12:09 +0000

Here is my recommendation for quickly learning at least the basics of infrastructure:

Hardware:

If you can start with a cluster of at least 3 computers.
- If not a single computer for a hypervisor will work
- If not then VirtualBox or VMWorkstation will get you started with the absolute basics until you can get a hypervisor
If you have a couple old computers or laptops (at least 8gb ram each) then start with those.

Explaining The WRCCDC VyOS Script

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:20:45 +0000

Writeup of Wasabi’s VyOS script for WRCCDC. Writeup by Payton Erickson (UCI’s CCDC team)

The setup of the Script

#!/bin/vbash

function get_next_if() { excluded_interfaces=("$@") lowest_ifindex=-1 lowest_ifname for interface_path in /sys/class/net/*; do found=false interface=$(basename “$interface_path”) for excluded_interface in “${excluded_interfaces[@]}”; do if [ “$excluded_interface” == “$interface” ]; then found=true break fi done if [ “$found” == true ]; then continue fi ifindex=$(udevadm info -q property “$interface_path” | grep -E ‘^IFINDEX=’ | cut -d’=’ -f2) if [[ “$ifindex” =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]]; then if [ “$lowest_ifindex” -eq -1 ] || [ “$ifindex” -lt “$lowest_ifindex” ]; then lowest_ifindex="$ifindex" lowest_ifname="$interface" fi fi done if [ “$lowest_ifindex” -eq -1 ]; then echo "" else echo “$lowest_ifname” fi }

AWS Lightsail Wordpress Let's Encrypt Renewal

Wed, 03 Aug 2022 21:54:57 +0000

Problem:

Let’s Encrypt certificate expired

Time: 1 minute

Solution:

All you have to do is run a single command:

sudo /opt/bitnami/bncert-tool

Enter the domain names of your website and press enter.

I choose to enable HTTP -> HTTPS redirection, because I want users to use the https version of the site.

I also went with www to non-www redirection because I already have a dns rule that points all www requests to the non-www address, so this should make no real difference but seems simpler to me.

CCDC Powershell Script For Password Changes

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 07:59:51 +0000

Problem: In the CCDC competition often the default passwords are insecure and it is good practice to immediately change all passwords on the AD server. We are then required to send a csv file with all the updated passwords for each user.

Solution: A powershell script that can run on any windows server version 2012 R2 or newer.

Requirements for script:

Has to change ALL AD user passwords
Generate secure passwords
Create a csv file with username, and new password
Must work on at least Windows Server 2012

Getting the AD accounts:

System board 5V PG Voltage Failure

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 05:57:51 +0000

Date: Oct. 06, 2021

Time: 1 hour

Problem:

My Dell Poweredge r510 abruptly shutdown, and would not power back on.

How the problem was resolved:

Was the problem resolved?

No, the initial problem was fixed, the server booted and all checks were good, but it failed again after a month.

Update 2024:

The issue seems to persist, occasionally powering off abruptly. It happens about once every few months.