Challenge Author:

Difficulty: Easy

Description

Do you know how to use the web inspector?

Process / Notes

1. Follow the http link that was displayed
2. They said to use the web inspector, so it’s time to inspect elements
3. After inspecting the home, about, and contact pages, there doesn’t seem to be much of note
4. The only files seem to be this logo and the image of a person
5. In the about page, there’s a long, encoded-looking string
6. It doesn’t seem to be hex, but it might be a rot13?
7. It sounds like Neo Vim has a ROT13 feature built in using g?? to rotate the whole line
8. That didn’t seem to reveal anything
9. Looking up common encryption algorithms
10. Looked up a tutorial on how to do this ~36 minutes in, not knowing which method to use to decode the flag.
11. Turns out I found the right string but didn’t recognize that it was base64 encoded
12. echo 'the-string' | base64 -d
13. The flag has been revealed!

42 minutes 52 seconds to complete

Hints

1. Use the web inspector on other files included by the web page
2. The flag may or may not be encoded

Core Lessons

1. Understanding how to view a webpage source and inspect elements
2. Recognize when something looks like it’s out of place - like the long, encoded string
3. Recognizing base64 and understanding how to decode it with command line tools