Incidentally, I'm well aware that nobody doing this will be experts (or even amateurs), so I'll post a list of tools and some basic theories at the outset.
Could you post the list of tools and basic theories now? That way I can begin allocating my free time for research purposes.
Hmm, I can't list too much without giving away a lot (I have a pdf I can send that is basically a guide, but it's also basically a walkthrough
). I'll list some stuff, though!
My favourite tools (and the ones you need for this) are:
* Nmap
* Metasploit
* sqlmap
* rainbowcrack (rcrack) -- you only need the 'alpha' tables, which are <1gb, not anything else. I think l0pht puts out a live cd for cracking passwords, too
The theories:
* Port scanning
* Network discovery
* Web vulnerabilities (sql injection, path traversal, cross-site scripting [not required, but good to know], local/remote file include)
* Exploits (metasploit -> how to use the exploits, different payloads [meterpreter])
* Password cracking (w/ rainbow tables)
* Pass-the-hash (w/ metasploit)
That should put you in a good position.
I'm thinking I should do a basic one first to get people going, give out a prize for that one, post the theories used, then do my full contest. Thoughts on that?