super informal play by play of Hacktoria CTF (cigale 1337) (super casual and filled with much frustration, very serious people with CISSP's DNI )

 (begun on 4 August 2022 ended on 31 August 2022)

(all screenshots lost because I accidentally put the folder in trash and couldn't restore because it was too heavy? Ubuntu meet me outside I have some WORDS TO SAY)

cigale zip file

unzip

riddle txt file - Your “password” has gone to the dogs and they are inseparable.

metadata suggests nothing strange

next zip file fctodetad needs password to open

brute force all related words and the regular ol passwords, didnt works, obvs

google search the riddle string lmao some 4chan board which is 404 not available. id thought it would be the next step but clearly it was someone trying to hack an easy way

"gone to the dogs" "inseparable" google search >> there is a gone to the dogs daycare and a facebook video of two inseparable dogs???? if this doesnt pan out im going to try the 1939 film

or maybe possibly a french city that has some connection to dogs, twins or whatever

wow i am so stupid it was cerberus

insane

it suddenly hit me lol

at first i thought kerberos but CERBERUS it is

now metadata read on the file

<<WW91ciBkZWF0aCBkYXRlIGlzIGluc2NyaWJlZCBvbiBSYXAgR29kJ3MgZ3JhdmUh>>

now onto this obvs encoded text string

base 64 decode

Your death date is inscribed on Rap God's grave!

ok deathdate.info is on hacktoria twt so i guess

the only clues that seem sensible are the symbols of death clues FREEZE FALL ELECTRICITY(so this was a red herring?)

AW HELL NAW THEY POSTED A HINT NOW IM GONNA FEEL LIKE I CHEATED

tbh i did have a similar idea so

its ok

moving on

so according to the hints the date and the previous info make a url, which i assume holds further info

8 may 2014

wow i feel very stupid today. nothing has worked out. went through previous ctf write ups to get some sort of clue on how to proceed. url forming seems to be a common link to 

all the challenges. supposedly some strings need to go through rots, dcode, what3words(for which i tried freeze fall electricity but couldnt find a match), some other forms of

medieval torture i guess and im really confused bruh. there is too much info. what previous info do i need to use. how do i also use the dat of death w it.nothing is clicking.

helloooooooooo twitter helped me lol

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8cxm777b9q41le2/AADoWzTlgCV6TbfcyrGRUWega

https://fareedfauzi.gitbook.io/ctf-checklist-for-beginner/web

curl -v 'http://deathdate.info' -H 'Host: ns2.dreamhost.com'nothing new. hm    txt record : v=spf1 mx include:netblocks.dreamhost.com include:relay.mailchannels.net -all" not imp. sorry

fctodetad

f c t o d e t a d 

d a t e d o t f c

href="d/7019db6b98832

DOT CF DOT CF WHY AM I LIKE THIS GOD I KEPT THINKING WHAT WENT WRONG WHEN I SIMPLY DONT KNOW HOW TO REVERSE A GODDAMN STRING OF LETTERS. 8may2014.cf

a Git page text. thats a lot of text but i didnt gobble down 3 books a day back then for nothing. guess what its a03 time. 

first part is from The Children of Odin:The Book of Northern Myths by padraic colum. 

nvm that there are oddities ab this text. words are spelled incorrectly and letters are repeated twice. listing it all here

ONCE ALWAYS

B i t y y g 7 3 4 m h 9  which makes bit.ly/g734mh9 which leads me to a dropbox.

a video named iamzorp. videos titled ITALLENDSFORUSALL310424.

hello trying to find stuff in this audio but this damned ubuntu wont play it :( mediainfo, zipdetail,metadata. 

reverse image searching the clips. dolls are nothing, the crossing is japan, the green thing is algae, the building is syria and garbage and death and doom and gloom or whatever

i thought perhaps qr in the street but deadend. 

right. letme put all stuff together. 3 1 0 4 2 4

ITALLENDSFORUSALL310424 theworldneverendsaway

they.will.find.you

will investigate the extid and fbid and the other xmp tags later. for now lets try sth else w this video

oh man guess who deleted their whole page and set up another in one night a whole day before the ctf was supposed to end and now they even put up the finishers page while i was literally ON the last step i hate everyone. and audacity and sonic visualiser obviously failed to yield any result and cyberchef keeps crashing and UGH

ok final move is using ffmpeg to export frames and then somehow analysing them to find out if theres text based on this random john hammond video i saw. 

right exported all frames to a folder. tesseract ocr text then concatenate the strings. maybe there is text in one of the frames. i checked frame 1337 first cus obvs and then it ha bugs and the github also says bugs and im reaching so far i can feel the moons surface. if not ill do a simple tesseract loop through the frames and concatenate the text files w a bash script.

i got jack all. also went thru the frames individually and found nothing.  

i hate this and im done w this and im laying this to rest. am i happy that even if i couldnt reach the end i still got to learn a lot and explored so many new things i otherwise never would? no. i wanted to complete it and now i am bitter, hateful and resentful. i will go read some horrible sci fi where everyone dies, EXCUSE ME.