After repairing the height or running StegSolve on the "Gray Bits" or "Red 0" planes, a text string (the flag) typically appears at the bottom of the image or in a separate output window. It usually follows the format CTF{...} or FLAG{...} .
: Run exiftool 2022-06-03 11-32-03~2.png . This often reveals interesting timestamps or software tags, though in this specific case, the metadata is usually clean or points toward a Windows screenshot. 2. Visual Inspection and Strings 2022-06-03 11-32-03~2.png
Below is a technical write-up of the steps required to solve this challenge. 1. Initial File Analysis After repairing the height or running StegSolve on
: Run strings 2022-06-03 11-32-03~2.png . In many versions of this challenge, the flag or a hint is appended to the end of the file in plain text, past the IEND chunk. This often reveals interesting timestamps or software tags,
If repairing the header doesn't reveal the flag, the next step is checking for hidden data:
: Use binwalk -e 2022-06-03 11-32-03~2.png to see if another file (like a .zip or .txt ) is embedded inside the image data. 5. Final Flag Extraction