Even when I am doing some of it as part of my day job, I still enjoy participating in, and seeing the results of, the forensic/packet contests/challenges that can be found periodically being run by folks I respect.  Currently there are at least 2 challenges that look interesting.  The first is put together by the authors of the SANS 558 - Network Forensics course.  Info on that one can be found at http://forensicscontest.com/2009/12/28/anns-appletv.  Their first two contests have been kind of fun, (in the interest of full disclosure, I'll be posting my solution to #2 on my handlers page over the weekend (talking to Jonathon and Sherry last week at SANS Security East, I decided I want to make one more minor addition to my scripts)).  The other is from the Honeynet Project and can be found at https://honeynet.org/node/504.  Both run until 1 Feb, so if you've got some time, give them a look.

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Jim Clausing, jclausing --at-- isc [dot] sans (dot) org