Riddle Registry

Easy
Time Spent: 10 minutes
https://play.picoctf.org/practice/challenge/530

🧠 What I Practiced/Learned/Discovered

  • Navigate/Analyze metadata
  • Tested multiple metadata tools : stat, ls -l exiftool
  • How to easily decode a base64 encoded string.

🔧 Tools used

Linux shell

  • cat
  • base64
  • exiftool
  • stat
  • ls

Steps

  1. Downloaded the PDF : https://challenge-files.picoctf.net/c_saffron_estate/3e53e18e2663d8818a300f0d3b56ae837b668a4798c5f5884d33b668a7257ce2/confidential.pdf
  2. Tried cat FILE | grep picoCTF{ but nothing
  3. Saw in the description to look everything + Metadata : Find the PDF file here [Hidden Confidential Document](https://challenge-files.picoctf.net/c_saffron_estate/3e53e18e2663d8818a300f0d3b56ae837b668a4798c5f5884d33b668a7257ce2/confidential.pdf) and uncover the flag within the metadata.
  4. Tested stat FILE
  5. Tested ls -l
  6. Tested exiftool FILE (And it gave me something) Image
  7. The Author name seemed weird because it’s base 64
  8. Run echo "cGljb0NURntwdXp6bDNkX20zdGFkYXRhX2YwdW5kIV9jMjA3MzY2OX0=" | base64 -d and found the flag