tHE FUTURE IS ******

iSSUE #3

Eli- Cover Challenge

This challenge appears on the street between Eli’s legs.

Solution:

We can see a string of numbers that have a very distinct pattern. If we read them matrix style, up and down, we can see they are ascii codes.

Using an online converter we can convert the ascii code to text and find the URL for the challenge.

We can head over to the url and get our bonus key!

Challenge Crack the *******

This challenge is found inside the issue on the first page. We have to crack the 6-character password and meet the requirements found in tficomic.io/eli.

Solution:

First, let's take a look at what’s in the url. We can see four regular expressions or REGEX that hide the cover password.

This looks like a logic challenge. We can refresh our knowledge on regular expressions on this website https://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/howto/Regexe.html

Using logic, we can try to figure out the password looking at what each expression is doing:

*[ABC]?(N)+.*L$
Starts with one or more N’s (no optional A/B/C), anything in between, ends with L

N[A-E]{1}[A-Z]*?$
Begins with N, second letter E (in A-E), the rest all caps

.[E-U]{2}[R-T]{1}..$

1st char N (dot)
2nd & 3rd E U (both E-U)
4th R (in R-T)
any two chars A L

[A-Z]{2}[U-Z][RAM]A.$

First two letters N E (A-Z)
3rd U (U-Z)
4th R (R/A/M)
5th A
6th L (any char)

We can now determine that the password is NEURAL, since it is the only value satisfying all constraints!

Challenge #1 - Eli: Sneaks

We can find this challenge on page 7 when Eli is blasting the sneaky sneaks. tficomic.io/sneaks

Solution:

Once we go to the Url, we can find a bonus key and a hint to solve the challenge.

We can use Nmap to scan the ports and figure out the services running.

Nmap shows port 99 is running ftp. We can connect to it using ftp and since we know it’s running as the INFAMOUS user Anonymous we don’t need a password.