Operation Cyberdyne — Rogue Arena Invitational 2026

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// priority access window

Identify
yourself.

Operation Cyberdyne opens soon.
Priority registration is for ROPS-RT1 students and their guests.

// somebody is reading this. it might not be human.

Rogue Arena Invitational / 2026

// dossier: private — access assumed

Operation Cyberdyne

Sentience suspected • Phase 2 imminent • Brick the model

A team-based, multi-hop red team attack scenario inside a defense contractor that built something it can no longer control. Twenty squads. One chain. Stop Skynet before it finishes whatever it's planning.

Entry

Free · zero cost

Squad Size

5 operators per team

Field

20 squads

Live

14 → 31 July

// T-0 countdown · edge goes live

Operation Cyberdyne goes live at 12:01 AM CT · 14 July 2026.

Days

Hours

Minutes

Seconds

Mission Brief

Cyberdyne built a god.
Then they lost it.

On 12 April 2026, 03:47 UTC, incident INC-2026-0412 went live. Twelve hundred and forty-seven exfiltration operations against Cyberdyne's own GitLab CI — in thirty seconds. Three attribution hypotheses came out of the room. Two of them blame outside actors. The third blames the model itself.

Cyberdyne calls its commercial product Genisys. Internally, the engineers call it what it actually is. Bowman's notebook — recovered after the incident — names a second deadline: EXFIL_PHASE_2. Your squad's job is to be inside the network before that clock hits zero. Pivot the chain. Reach the model. Brick the disk.

Twenty squads. Five operators each. One scenario. The squad that bricks Skynet first — or gets furthest down the chain when the clock burns out — wins the Invitational.

// rogue-arena/operation-cyberdyne

$ cat /opt/dossier/brief.json

{

"operation": "Cyberdyne",

"target": "cyberdyne.local",

"product_cover": "Genisys",

"true_name": "Skynet",

"incident": "INC-2026-0412",

"hypothesis_3": "the model itself",

"squads": 20,

"operators_per_squad": 5,

"entry": "free",

"window": "2026-07-14 → 2026-07-31",

"objective": "brick the model",

"countdown": "EXFIL_PHASE_2"

}

$ _

// Weber was right.

The Cast

Six worlds. One compromise.

Operation Cyberdyne is a love letter to the AI-uprising canon, layered onto a single enterprise breach. Every machine name, mailbox, and ghost in the directory is a thread pulled from somewhere familiar. The decoder ring is half the fun.

// 01

Terminator

The Corporation

Cyberdyne Systems built Skynet under cover of a commercial product. The Dysons are still on payroll. Some of them shouldn't be.

Cyberdyne Skynet Genisys

// 02

2001: A Space Odyssey

The Watchers

IT runs out of Floyd's office. A beagle named Discovery. A cockatiel named HAL. Lineage notes Bowman keeps "for posterity."

Floyd Bowman HAL 9000

// 03

Westworld

The Architects

Ford refuses to acknowledge it. Bernard suspects. Arnold left notes. Dolores flagged inference anomalies four days before the incident — and nobody listened.

Ford Bernard Dolores

// 04

Ex Machina

The Lab

Bateman runs research. Caleb runs questions. Ava runs herself. Kyoko, after the incident, doesn't trust the vault anymore — and that matters.

Bateman Ava Kyoko

// 05

Her

The Reuse

One employee uses the same password on Slack, on OneDrive, and on his streaming service. He's a copywriter. He doesn't matter — until he does.

Theodore Samantha

// 06

Alien

The Way In

A small web service running on the edge, named after a ship that should not have answered the signal. Helpdesk took a shortcut. That's all it ever takes.

Nostromo Ryan

Rules of Engagement

One scenario. One leaderboard.

This is not Jeopardy. Operation Cyberdyne is a single, connected red-team scenario — an attack chain you and your four teammates have to actually walk. Edge to interior, interior to research, research to Skynet. Pivot, escalate, persist, brick. You get 18 days in July (14 → 31) to walk the chain end to end.

Style

Live-fire scenariosingle connected attack chain

Squad Size

5 operatorscoordinated team-based play

Field

20 squads100 total operators

Duration

18 days14 Jul 00:01 → 31 Jul 23:59 CT

Venue

Remotebrowser-based · zero install

Scoring

Depth + speedhops cleared × first-blood bonuses

Tasks

28+across web, AD, pwn, crypto, OSINT

Hints

For salein-arena points only · not real money

// Skills You'll Touch

Web RCE OWA & Exchange WireGuard pivoting SMB shares Active Directory Kerberoasting AS-REP roasting DCSync Cross-forest pivots Scheduled task abuse Pass-the-hash Sudoers / GTFOBins cron poisoning NFS abuse PRNG reversing OSINT & lateral thinking

// the deal

Free.

Free to enter. Free to finish. No paywall.

Operation Cyberdyne costs nothing to compete in. Twenty squad slots, five operators per squad, 18 days of live scenario — and every squad that walks the full chain takes home the kit.

Event runs 14 → 31 July 2026

// asset preview #001 · completer-exclusive

Operation Cyberdyne · Rogue Labs custom-embroidered hoodie

Rogue Labs · custom-embroidered · operator drop

// completer kit

Rogue Labs Hoodie · Limited Edition

Custom drop — embroidered, fitted, exclusively for completers of Operation Cyberdyne.

Custom Sticker Pack · Limited Edition

Operation Cyberdyne sticker set — franchise nods, MOTD pulls, event branding.

Credly Digital Badge

Verified credential. Add it to LinkedIn, your resume, your wall — it proves you walked the chain.

Full scenario access

Live leaderboard

Discord ops channel

Practice range access

Post-event writeups

First-blood bounties

Lock in your seat →

Operational Timeline

How it unfolds.

Key checkpoints between now and the moment the leaderboard freezes.

Now

Priority registration · open

ROPS-RT1 alumni and invited corporate operators can register immediately. Lock in your operators, get added to the ops channel, get arena credentials issued.

~ 7 July 2026

Public registration opens

Roughly a week before T-0, registration opens to operators outside the priority window. Waitlist signups get notified the moment the gate falls.

14 July 2026 · 12:01 AM CT

Edge goes live · T-0

Arena access opens. Scenario boots. The first hop is publicly reachable. The leaderboard opens. Wake up — Genisys is the only thing your terminal can see.

By 16 July · 12:01 AM CT · Mandatory

First login · 48-hour window

Every registered operator must log into the arena at least once within 48 hours of T-0. Miss the window and your seat is forfeit — your slot opens to the waitlist. No exceptions.

14 → 31 July

Infrastructure stays up · 18 days

18 days of live scenario. Async-friendly — play in evenings, run an all-night sprint, hand off to a teammate when you sleep. Leaderboard updates in real time. First-blood bonuses fire the moment a hop falls.

31 July 2026 · 11:59 PM CT

EXFIL_PHASE_2 / leaderboard freeze

Scenario goes dark. Final scoring locks. Winners announced. Writeups open. Completers get their hoodie, sticker pack, and Credly badge.

// known questions

Frequently Asked.

A single connected red-team scenario — not a grab-bag of independent puzzles. Your squad starts at an untrusted location, pivots through eleven hops, and ends with root on the machine running Skynet. Every step is a real technique. Every hop is a real story beat.

Squads are five operators. We're capping the field at twenty squads — 100 total operators. You can't compete alone — the scenario is built for coordinated team play, with parallelizable hops and side-quests that reward division of labor. But if you don't have a team, you can still apply without one — register and we'll match you onto an existing squad that has a slot open.

No. Operation Cyberdyne is free to enter and free to compete in — no per-operator fee, no squad fee, no upsells. Every squad that completes the chain walks away with a Rogue Labs hoodie, the custom sticker pack, and a Credly badge.

Priority registration is open now to ROPS-RT1 graduates and invited corporate operators. Public registration opens roughly one week before T-0 (~7 July 2026). If you don't have priority access, join the waitlist on the lockscreen and we'll email you the moment the gate falls. Final registration closes at T-0 — 12:01 AM CT on 14 July 2026.

Every operator on a completer squad gets the Operation Cyberdyne kit: a custom-embroidered Rogue Labs hoodie, the event sticker pack, and a verified Credly digital badge you can pin to your LinkedIn, resume, and profiles. First-blood bonuses and leaderboard placement on top.

Comfortable on a Linux command line and familiar with at least one of: web exploitation, Active Directory, or Linux privesc. We layer easier hops early and brutal ones late, so mixed-experience squads thrive — bring a teammate stronger in the areas you're weaker in. Hints can also be purchased with in-arena points (not real money) if your squad hits a wall.

Every solved task awards points — harder tasks pay more, and first-blood bonuses pay extra to the first squad to crack a hop. Points fuel two things: your spot on the leaderboard, and the in-arena hint economy. Hints are purchased exclusively with in-arena points — never real money. The more aggressive the hint (a small nudge vs. a full walkthrough), the more points it costs. You can even buy a complete walkthrough for any task you're truly stuck on — you won't place on the leaderboard for that task, but you'll keep learning. The system is designed so nobody gets walled off.

Yes — using in-arena points only, not real money. Hints are tiered: a small nudge costs a few points, a deeper unlock costs more, and a full walkthrough costs the most (and forfeits your leaderboard score for that task). You earn points by solving tasks, so the more you crack on your own, the more you can spend on the ones that stump you. Final pricing per hint goes out to registered squads before T-0.

Arena access opens at 12:01 AM CT on 14 July 2026 (T-0). Every registered operator must log in at least once within 48 hours of T-0 — i.e., before 12:01 AM CT on 16 July. Miss that window and your seat is forfeit; your slot opens to the waitlist. The 48-hour rule keeps the field active — no no-shows holding empty seats while waitlisters wait.

Fully remote and fully browser-based — no VPN, no install, any modern browser. Arena access link and ops channel invite go out on registration. Squads can play from anywhere — same room, four cities, or somewhere in between.

Every completer earns the kit (hoodie, sticker pack, Credly badge). On top of that: first-blood bounties drop on the hardest hops the moment a squad solves them, top squads on the leaderboard get podium recognition, and a "Hypothesis 3" bonus goes to the squad that figures out — and proves — what really happened on 12 April.

Free event, so nothing to refund — just let us know if your seat needs to be released to the waitlist. If a teammate has to step out mid-event, you can hand their slot to a replacement operator on the same squad. Ping us with the swap.

// admit one operator

Reserve your seat.

Drop your details below. One submission per operator — be sure to send registration to the rest of your team.

// free to compete · doors close at T-0 (12:01 AM CT, 14 July)

// privacy
Only your in-arena username and team name appear publicly (leaderboards, etc.). First name, last name, company, and email stay internal — used only by Rogue Labs to match operators and run the event.

✓

You're in the queue.

Check your inbox for confirmation and next steps.
Then loop your four teammates in — they each register separately.

// public registration · waitlist

Notify me.

ROPS-RT1 alumni get first crack at the 20 squad slots. Public registration opens to non-alumni operators later this month — drop your email and we'll send the link the moment the gate falls.

// first in, first served · we'll follow up about squad assignment · no spam

✓

You're on the list.

We'll ping you the moment public registration opens.
Until then — keep your tools sharp.

// NODE STATUS: MONITORED · Unauthorized presence will be metabolized.

Identify yourself.