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Finally back on The SEINT's trail - 2023 OSINT Challenge Pt.2

  Earlier this year , I made a start on The Seint's 2023 challenge, getting to Step 5 before work intervened. It's hard to believe it's the middle of July before I've had chance to pick it up again! An explanation of the challenge and how to test your solution for each step is explained in Part 1 , so let's press on.  __________ SPOILER ALERT! If you want to have a go at solving The SEINT's puzzle yourself, please DON'T read on here, as this is obviously heavily spoilered.  __________ Here's the clue for Step 5: step5.txt — Now it's time to move on. Let's change the continent and meet some friends. They started their road trip from San Diego, through Barcelona, heading to Valencia. We are heading from Valencia, on the same route, but in the opposite direction. We ride our cars with roughly the same speed, so we shall meet in the middle, after driving 154 miles. Can you look into the map and tell the name of the town we will be meeting in? The nam...
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Back on The SEINT's trail - 2023 OSINT Challenge

  Last year, I had a lot of fun working through The SEINT 's 2021 OSINT challenge, which you can read about here . Then, via Sector035 , I heard that The SEINT had published a new challenge, which you can find on this GitHub repo . The challenge simply involves opening a nested series of zipped files, with the password for each zip being an MD5 hash of the answer to the previous level. In order to get us going, The SEINT says that the password for the first zip is the MD5 hash of the word dive . As we are going to be hashing a number of words, it is worth keeping a browser tab open with CyberChef running in it.  SPOILER ALERT! If you want to have a go at solving The SEINT's puzzle yourself, please DON'T read on here, as this is obviously heavily spoilered.  Yes, some images still have Metadata! The first level of the zip file contains four files. One of these is the password-protected zip for the next level, and one is a hint; we will be trying not to use hints. We are t...
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OSINT: Learning by Doing. A walkthrough of The Seint's OSINT Puzzles - PART 4

This is the final part of my walkthrough of an OSINT CTF set by The Seint in a GitHub repo you can find  here . So far, each subsequent step is nested inside a zip archive that is unlocked by solving the previous step. Each layer is password protected, the password being an MD5 hash of the previous stage's answer. You can fins the beginning of the series here . WARNING: Obviously there are spoilers in this series; they are a walkthrough after all! STEP 6 - It's Over Now... Opening  step6.zip , we find the usual contents... step6.txt step6 - hint.txt step7.zip As before, we'll try getting through this without a hint, and in step6.txt  we have our clue: This is the last step of this trip around the world. The title of this quiz contains a part of the album name, recorded by a band from a Northern-European country. This band recorded a very popular song in 1990. However, this recording was a slightly changed version of the same song recorded back in 1987. In the lyrics,...
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OSINT: Learning by Doing. A walkthrough of The Seint's OSINT Puzzles - PART 3

This is a walkthrough of an OSINT CTF set by The Seint in a GitHub repo you can find  here . So far, each subsequent step is nested inside a zip archive that is unlocked by solving the previous step. Each layer is password protected, the password being an MD5 hash of the previous stage's answer. You can see how we solved steps 1 to 3 in these earlier posts: Part 1 , Part 2 . WARNING   Obviously there are spoilers in this series; they are a walkthrough after all! STEP 4 - A Visit to Japan Opening step4.zip , we find two text files and the .zip for the next stage: - step4.txt - step4 - hint.txt - step5.zip As before, we'll try getting through this without a hint. Opening step4.txt , we find our clue: --- There is a housing estate somewhere in Japan with the same name as the first five letters of the resort in Hawaii from the previous task. Next to it, there is a dental clinic. The working hours have changed over the past years. What were the clinic’s afternoon working hour...
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OSINT: Learning by Doing. A walkthrough of The Seint's OSINT Puzzles - PART 2

This is a walkthrough of an OSINT CTF set by The SEINT in a GitHub repo you can find here . Unless there are any surprises later on, each stage is nested inside a zip archive that is unlocked by solving the previous stage ( like a matryoshka doll, hence the cover image ). Each layer is password protected, the password being an MD5 hash of the previous stage's answer. You can see how we solved Step 1 in my previous post .  WARNING: Obviously there are spoilers in this series; they are a walkthrough after all! STEP 2 - The Day The Music Died Opening step2.zip, we find two text files: - step2.txt - step2 - hint.txt Let's see how we get on without the hint, shall we? Opening step2.txt, we find a 'treasure hunt' style of clue: --- The name of the place from the previous task is a name of a song by American singer and songwriter. The lyrics mention something that happened several years before the song was released. In the place the lyrics refer to, there is a little structure...
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