A Strange File Writeup
It takes an insane level of effort for an insane challenge — VEEXH
MISSION BRIEFING
Greetings Special Agent K. During a raid of our allies in the country of Oman, several computers and server equipment were confiscated.
The authorities of Oman spent the past week analyzing the data that resides on this hardware. However, they were not able to make sense of all the data.
This is where we come in. The Overseer of Hacktoria has agreed to a no-cure no-pay assignment for the government of Oman. If we manage to figure out what the file they’ve sent us means, we take on several additional contracts in the future, at very favorable terms.
A little more information about this file. It was found in a folder named “meeting location”. It had several text files in it, that all had written details about locations and people.
There was one file however, that the Oman authorities were not able to convert to text. This is the file you find below. Please make sense of it and report your findings Special Agent.
As always, Special Agent K. The contract is yours, if you choose to accept.
METHODOLOGY
For this contract you will need to use the website https://what3words.com/
The password to open the linkfile consists of (lowercase letters):
country-district-city-areadialcode-what-three-words-business-type
Sample password:
italy-veneto-verona-045-hot-pasta-sauce-paper-mill
Download the zip file and extract the strange file.
There are two different routes you can take at this point:
- cat strange-file | xxd -r -p > <image>.jpg : Outputs an image
- foremost -i <image>.jpg -o outdir : Outputs two images
The challenge can be solved using only the first image. However, the second image is much easier to deal with and is what I heavily relied on to complete the contract. There are always multiple clues in any photo that can be utilized to pinpoint an exact location, but with this contract, I had to enlist the help of my outstanding and intelligent friend Yasmin, who is a native Arabic speaker.
Yasmin was able to read the Arabic writing to the right in image 02 and correctly deduce the country of the photo. This helped save countless hours of geolocation. The green and white trim building in image 02 is a gas station and from countless brainstorming sessions with 7069Wrk, we eliminated all other potential countries we intended to search and focused solely on Libya. 7069Wrk and I searched for countless gas stations on end in several Arabic-speaking nations ranging from Oman to Western Sahara. With our focus solely on Libya, what really helped was overpass turbo.
Focusing solely on the yellow pins, we searched every gas station via satellite imagery until we found the correct match. Trust me, we were more than overjoyed when we both realized all our hard work had paid off.
LOCATION
Password: libya-nalut-dirj-47-definitive-doorpost-thickness-car-wash
