Honey Vault – Attack and Defence Lab
(Rules of Engagement)
Welcome to Honey Vault – Where the Sweetest Data Is the Hardest to Keep!
Honey Vault (Attack & Defence Lab) is The Honeycomb’s (powered by Hive Hack) main attraction at this year’s DefCamp. Two sides, one hive: one team fights to keep the vault sealed, the other fights to walk away with the “honey”.
Inspired by how a real colony works – guards at the entrance, alarms rippling through the comb, and intruders probing for a way in, Honey Vault drops you into a live network, where every action has a defender on the other end. This is not just a static CTF. – the infrastructure is breathing, someone is watching your traffic, and the scoreboard moves while you think.
Choose your side:
Guard Bees (Blue Team) – harden the hive, read the alerts, kick out what should not be there;
Hornets (Red Team) – enumerate, pivot, escalate, and bring the Queen down.
New to this? Perfect. Our Beekeepers are on-site the whole time to explain what you’re looking at, hand you the right tools, and get you unstuck. No gatekeeping, no pressure – just a swarm of people figuring it out together.
What you will find at Honey Vault:
/A live Attack & Defence range: real Active Directory, real SIEM, real consequences;
/Guided entry points for first-timers, and deep water for those who want it;
/Honeypots, deception traps, and detections you can actually watch fire off;
/Hive-themed chaos, hexagonal scoreboards, and far too many bee puns.
Come for the honey. Stay for the sting.
Rules of Engagement
1. Respect the Hive
– Treat participants, Beekeepers, and organizers with respect.
– Harassment, discrimination, or gatekeeping has no place here.
– Nobody gets mocked for asking a basic question. Ever.
2. Learn First, Score Second
– Ask the Beekeepers : they are here to help, not judge.
– Talk to the opposing side once a round ends. Hornets explain the attack, Guard Bees explain the detection -that is where the learning happens.
– Collaboration for learning is encouraged. Sharing flags is not.
3. Keep the Hive Alive
– Guard Bees: your services must stay online and reachable.
– Hornets: own the box, do not kill it. No wiping, no encrypting.
– Leave the logs alone. They are the shared story of what happened.
4. Fair Play Only
– Attack the range, not the scoreboard, the VPN, or anyone’s laptop.
– Keep your scans sane — no floods, no -T5 across the whole range. The hive is shared.
– Found a bug in our infrastructure? Let us know instead of exploiting it — responsible disclosure earns bonus points.
5. Stay Ethical & Legal
– Everything in Honey Vault is isolated and synthetic. Only the targets listed in the briefing are in scope.
– The range runs in a dedicated cloud environment. The cloud console, the account behind it, the VPN, and anything outside the lab network are off-limits.
– Your authorization stops at the edge of this range.
6. Enjoy the Sting
– Take breaks. Drink water. Look at what the other team is doing.
– Getting owned is not failure — it is the fastest way to learn what to watch out for the next time you come around.
– Attempt the thing you are not sure will work. That is the whole point.
