Automate the pain

Writeup for H@cktivityCon CTF

These are the writeups for the challenges that I created for the 2020 H@cktivityCon CTF by HackerOne.

Spy vs Spy

Spy vs Spy is a simple challenge. Use stegsolve to see the flag on Red, Green, or Blue Plane 0. flag_spyvsspy.png

Cold War

Cold war hides the flag using whitespace steganography. Use stegsnow without password to retrieve the flag. flag_coldwar.png

Chess Cheater

Chess Cheater is a morse code challenge. Using this site, the non-standard format flag can be retrieved. flag_chesscheater.png

Busted

Busted is a password-protected challenge. The password is in the comment field of the image header. Use steghide to retrieve the flag. flag_busted.png

Contracted

Contracted is a braille-focused challenge that embeds a file within the host file. There are two versions of braille: uncontracted, and contracted. Use stegpy to retrieve the hidden file. Translate using uncontracted braille to retrieve the flag flag{touch_read_write}. flag_contracted.png

Fan Theory

This challenge uses the book cipher to select characters based on its positioning provided by the key followed by a rotation of 10 (rot10). The intent of the challenge is to go back and forth from steps one and two. This challenge was not able to be scripted, and was not well received because of that. The scrambled flag is vbqw{feiyjyluduwqjylusetui} and the flag is flag{positivenegativecodes}.

Unsubscribe

Unsubscribe uses the technique of discreetly hiding short message in spam. Using spammimic, we are able to encode or decode the messages. flag_unsubscribe.png

Substitute Face

Substitute Face uses the emoji cypher followed by a substitution to hide the flag. There are two ways to solve this challenge. The easier way is to decode the emojis using the Emoji Cypher solution, or by converting the emojis to unicode to extract the hex strings (last two characters), and using the subtitution key ctlbxysgjpqiwhueaovdmfknzr to retrieve the flag.

1. 👳👯👸👣👤🐡🐠👺👵👭🐠👢👪👢🐠👪👤🐡🐠👹👩👣👳👻👷👵👲👪👩👩👣👟👬👵👢👸👷👵👰👪👽

2. 
U+D83DU+DC73 U+D83DU+DC6F U+D83DU+DC78 U+D83DU+DC63 U+D83DU+DC64 U+D83DU+DC21 U+D83DU+DC20 U+D83DU+DC7A U+D83DU+DC75 U+D83DU+DC6D U+D83DU+DC20 U+D83DU+DC62 U+D83DU+DC6A U+D83DU+DC62 U+D83DU+DC20 U+D83DU+DC6A U+D83DU+DC64 U+D83DU+DC21 U+D83DU+DC20 U+D83DU+DC79 U+D83DU+DC69 U+D83DU+DC63 U+D83DU+DC73 U+D83DU+DC7B U+D83DU+DC77 U+D83DU+DC75 U+D83DU+DC72 U+D83DU+DC6A U+D83DU+DC69 U+D83DU+DC69 U+D83DU+DC63 U+D83DU+DC5F U+D83DU+DC6C U+D83DU+DC75 U+D83DU+DC62 U+D83DU+DC78 U+D83DU+DC77 U+D83DU+DC75 U+D83DU+DC70 U+D83DU+DC6A U+D83DU+DC7D

3.
73 6F 78 63 64 21 20 7A 75 6D 20 62 6A 62 20 6A 64 21 20 79 69 63 73 7B 77 75 72 6A 69 69 63 5F 6C 75 62 78 77 75 70 6A 7D

4.
soxcd! zum bjb jd! yics{wurjiic_lubxwupj}

5.
FLAG{MOZILLA_CODEMOJI}

World Hotspots

World Hotspots provides the MAC address 9C:EF:D5:FB:9F:F0. As indicated by the challenge title, the flag can be found using Wigle.net. Now you know my neighborhood. flag_worldhotspots.png