Phenominal-Photo

Forensics/Steganography

Simon was spotted dwelling under the clock-tower yet again, this time taking pictures. He seems to have captured a strange object in the far far distance going left, right, up, and down seemingly lost or out of control. There is a strange aura radiating from the photo, pulsations even, like an SOS. Can you figure out this strange phenomenon??

Author: WillyMcX

Given a single image, I tried using binwalk to find hidden files in the image but there was nothing:

$ binwalk boo.jpg

DECIMAL       HEXADECIMAL     DESCRIPTION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0             0x0             JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01

So, I tried using steganography to find the hidden files inside the image, and was given a zip file.

$ steghide extract -sf boo.jpg
Enter passphrase:
wrote extracted data to "Ship#1.zip".

Inside the zip there was gps.zip and Map.txt. The zip file was locked with a password, and this time I couldn't brute force it using john. Looking into the plaintext file, oh my god

⋔⏃⌿: ⌰⟒⎎⏁, ⎍⌿, ⎅⍜⍙⋏, ⌰⟒⎎⏁, ⎅⍜⍙⋏, ⍀⟟☌⊑⏁, ⍀⟟☌⊑⏁, ⎅⍜⍙⋏, ⌰⟒⎎⏁, ⎍⌿, ⌰⟒⎎⏁, ⍀⟟☌⊑⏁, ⎍⌿

⍀⟒⋔⟟⋏⎅⟒⍀ ⏁⊑⏃⏁ ⍜⎍⍀ ☌⌿⌇ ⟟⌇ ⏃ ⌰⟟⏁⏁⌰⟒ ⎎⎍⋏☍⊬, ⟟⏁ ⍜⋏⌰⊬ ⏁⏃☍⟒⌇ ⏁⊑⟒ ⎎⟟⍀⌇⏁ ⌰⟒⏁⏁⟒⍀ ⍜⎎ ⟒⏃☊⊑ ⎅⟟⍀⟒☊⏁⟟⍜⋏ ⍙⟒ ⍙⏃⋏⏁ ⏁⍜ ☌⍜ (⌇⏁⎍⌿⟟⎅ ⋔⟒⋔⍜⍀⊬ ⋔⏃⋏⏃☌⟒⋔⟒⋏⏁)

After some searching with the help of a friend I discovered the existence of an Alien Language translator to decode this message:

Using LUDLDRRDLULRU to open the zip, I was given another message to decode, and with the given message, the flag was found!

$ cat myrequest.txt
⋏⟟☊☊{⊑⟒⌰⌿_⋔⟒_⎎⟟⋏⎅_⏁⊑⟒_⌿⌰⏃⋏⟒⏁_⏚0⍜}

Last updated