Code Breaking!

If you read this . You will see that it's organized on certain dates, which they don't mention -_-

 

Open to UK citizens only - and it is too easy:

https://cybersecuritychallenge.org.uk/cipher.html

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Too lazy to check whether the bits in the image border contain some actual information - but i guess so, they don't look random...

 

Any chance you will share with us how something like that is done? :)

 

The code is base64, with a bit of experience this is easy to spot (i.e. check how images or other attachments are encoded in emails, or basic http authorization - it uses only certain characters (7-bit printable), 4 chars encode 3 bytes, if the number of bytes is not a multiple of 3, there are padding "="s to fill it up... as i said, esay to spot when you have worked with it before.

Next step is to decode it (simply google for "base64 decoder online"), we start with a couple of lines, to see if we can make something meaningful out of it - this gives some odd characters (binary data) and in between there is the "magic .jpg" header id constant "JFIF".


Once you know that, you can decode it all and save it as a file with the extension .jpg...





If someone has the patience to write down the bits from the image border, i can give that a shot, too - im sure there is a hidden url or something in it.
Anyone lives in the UK and needs a career boost? :D

 

Thought so, about being an image.
When word imports an image but it uses a wrong charset, it shows such characters too.
So basically this code translates into bits which make up the pixels of the image?

EDIT: have been playing around a bit with the code, and it makes my browser crash..

 

Every code is "just bits" - it's the context that defines what you make out of these bits, the different meanings you give those bits (or groups thereof).

How "playing around"?

Try this decoder, to decode the first lines as text, it even lets you download the decoded data as file (just save as whatever.jpg) and you're done - a matter of secons if you know what to do.

 

Of course.

Playing around as in; decoding it to hex and bin and trying to make a readable file out of it.
As i read the text i think i know what went wrong with crashing:
it states that when you translate it normally it will try to execute the code. If there are unreadable things in it, it will do strange things, right?

In the meantime i decoded it that way. Seems like i shoud've used ascii instead of hex or bin.

And i get the pic you posted there ^^

The border seems to be binary (high or low pixel)
So if would would make a binary out of that and arrange it in 8bits, I should get something..

EDIT: the url on the pic brings me to this: http://xkcd.com/583/

 

Execute? I hope not... or someone could just encode a trojan dropper and publish it, someone will be curious enough to decode it... ;)

Nah, it shouldn't execute, some browsers may have trouble displaying the substitute chars for the binary data.

It's 538, not 583:

xkcd: Security

And this is where the pic originates from, just that it has no border there... ;)

 

Oops :s

//10char

 

The image border does indeed hold some data, don't want to spoil it for everyone though, hence no info on what it contains.

Next stage of the challenge seems to be a bit harder though :)

 

Yes, they contain a link, as expected - which takes you to the next code

Thanks for posting, will check that out later :)