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Comment on Cyber Security Challenge – Xmas Cipher by Sam

Sam — Tue, 03 May 2011 14:33:09 +0000

Hi GI,

Only just checked the site: thanks for the reply.

Do you have any specific suggestions for reading material?

Comment on Cyber Security Challenge – Xmas Cipher by The Grand Inquisitor

The Grand Inquisitor — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 13:41:39 +0000

Hi Sam,

Perhaps I’m not the best person to ask as I don’t work in the cyber security sector, but how I got to this level and I’m by no means good at this is that I read a lot, mostly on the Internet so it was all free, some books for the hard core stuff.

When I was at university I took a course in Internet and Information Security but this just touched on topics rather than go into any great detail, rest I just learnt in my own free time.

But time has allowed me to reflect, so this is what I would do if I was going into it now, first I would contact a company that I would like to work for one day and ask what they want from their employee, you may or may not get a reply. Also look at online courses they range in price, look at university courses they’ve improved greatly since I was at uni. Rest set up a few virtual machines running Linux and start testing and last but not least read.

Hope this helps you.

Comment on Cyber Security Challenge – Xmas Cipher by Andrew Butkus

Andrew Butkus — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 10:34:04 +0000

hey,

been waiting patiently for the tutorial so thanks for writing it up =D – got to certain stages of it and faltered. Your comment at the end of the article is v. true, it looks so easy when you read the tutorial, but when you’re in the thick of it you’re not sure if youre on the right tracks or not.

I got the truecrypt password that was fairly easy, but i had myself convinced that there would be some form of steganography involved.

For the xmas balls i got the secret password as this:

XMAS CANDELA (and that also converts into MAX CANDELAS)- with candela being the intensity of light – so i was chasing my tail looking at all the pixels in the pictures to see if there was anything which stood out!!

http://www.asciitable.com/index/asciifull.gif – incase you’re wondering the 127 xmas ball is actually the ‘del’ chr, but it seems you got that bit further anyway and i was on the wrong tracks =D

Well done dude, wasnt an easy one this time.

Andy

Comment on Cyber Security Challenge – Xmas Cipher by Sam

Sam — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:22:05 +0000

Thanks for the explanation – very insightful.

As someone wanting to get into IT Security, I’d be interested in hearing how you have developed your skills over the years to reach this level.

Comment on Cyber Security Challenge – Xmas Cipher by Tweets that mention Cyber Security Challenge – Xmas Cipher | theinquisition.co.uk -- Topsy.com

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 14:43:36 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by David Cawley, CyberSecChallengeUK. CyberSecChallengeUK said: Xmas cipher winner Senad Zukic has posted a tutorial on how he got the answer: http://tinyurl.com/6bbue6q [...]

Comment on Cyber Security Challenge – Cipher 2 by The Grand Inquisitor

The Grand Inquisitor — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 21:16:07 +0000

Thanks and your welcome, I personally found cipher 1 very fiddly because wave 1 was so long, I had to double check that I decoded everything correctly. Cipher 2 was a bit more methodical, the funny looking Latin, I’m not sure if you know but it’s called “Lorem Ipsum” basically meaningless text there’s no translation, they use it in print and web design for spacing text but without needing to have proper copy. I’ll be posting the solution for cipher 3 soon. They used some nice tricks in that so I suggest you have a read for future reference.

Comment on Cyber Security Challenge – Cipher 2 by david c lawlor

david c lawlor — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 20:20:53 +0000

well done and thanks for solutions, I attempted both cipher one and two challenges,on cipher one i was on right lines but didnt have all the code for wave 1,cipher two managed to open zip file contents but went completely wrong way opened data text file in hex editor,text seemed to be latin so spent ages using google translator to change to english,believing some of the odd words were cipher.