HackTheBox Coding Challenge "Threat Index" Solution

I wrote this script to solve the HackTheBox Coding CHallenge "Threat Index": https://app.hackthebox.com/challenges/Threat%20Index/

Disclaimer

I am not saying this is the right way, or even a good way. I am saying it worked for me. Use this at your own risk.

Usage

Simply copy the code in main.py, and paste it into the editor provided by the challenge, run it, then profit.

How it works

The challenge provides a list of weighted keywords. The goal is to scan a string of characters the challenge will feed the script for those phrases and return a "threat index" indicating the level of threat the string represents.

Keywords

KEYWORDS = {
    "scan": 1,
    "response": 2,
    "control": 3,
    "callback": 4,
    "implant": 5,
    "zombie": 6,
    # ... snip ...
}

As you can see, zombie is worth 6 points, scan is worth 1, and so on.

Phrases are passed as arguments to the script sys.args[1] and can contain non-alpha characters. We pass that phrase to the scan(<string>) function.

Using a List Comprehnsion, we remove any non-alpha characters.

phrase = "".join([char for char in phrase if char.isalpha()])

Here, we count occurrences of each keyword in the phrase and multiply that count by each keywords' weight, and return the total score for that phrase.

for word in KEYWORDS:
    score = score + (phrase.count(word) * KEYWORDS.get(word))

return score

Print the result to ther console and you win.

if __name__ == "__main__":
    phrase = sys.argv[1]

    if phrase: print(scan(phrase))