Merry Christmas, challenge fans! As you know, my friends and I write several challenges per year for EthicalHacker.net. But, we've made it a bit of a tradition around here of reserving the December challenge slot for me, an honor which I sincerely appreciate. During past holiday seasons, you got to tangle with the Grinch, Rudolph, that Messy Marvin kid, Frosty, and even Santa himself.

This year, Kevin Johnson and I worked together on a challenge in which you'll get to save Santa Claus from the insane asylum! We call it "Miracle on Thirty-Hack Street", after the classic 1947 movie. In this tale, you'll get to analyze some Facebook accounts to see if you can draw out the secrets needed to decrypt a file. Remember, we'll award an autographed copy of my Counter Hack Reloaded book to three winners: the best technical answer, the best creative answer that is technically correct, and a random draw winner from anyone who happens to send in, well, pretty much anything in association with the challenge. Even if you can't answer all of the questions, send us what you've got to try for that random draw slot. Thank you again for reading and participating in these challenges. I hope you enjoy this one! All entries are due by January 11, 2010.

Facebook privacy settings recently changed.   Hopefully this challenge accepts an answer based on the current default settings, since I have no idea what the defaults used to be.