August

Let’s start the August!!!

Hi, just wanted to make my pressence known and say I had no say in how many points this challenge is worth. It’s not complex and will be hard to complete without using the hint…

“August left Chris in America.” 4 distinct clues: August, and Chris are two characters, left is a clue and america is a clue.

Don’t really wanna give too much away too early

2 days and no first blood? I’m going to start looking now :smile:

I’m getting a lot of private messaged but I don’t really wanna be giving hints or clues to individuals and ruining the competition so what I’ve said so far: Augustus Caesar is the wrong character

sry for spam and sorry for my really inadequate clue… I will give a near give away after a week///

more public data:
"you have to create your own cipher based on the hints? replacement cipher i think you call it? clear text is “chris” and gets encrypted with “august -left -america” "

Can you let us all know one thing, is it a stretch of a challenge, as in, will we learn from it, and is it hard because it has a learning curve, or is it hard because it is a very far stretch and a guessing game?

the key here is what “left” actually means…

Type your comment> @chivato said:

Can you let us all know one thing, is it a stretch of a challenge, as in, will we learn from it, and is it hard because it has a learning curve, or is it hard because it is a very far stretch and a guessing game?

I think its hard because I’ve made it in a way that if I told a friend the cipher and gave him the hint he could solve it.

have this hint before I give the keyword away: “No math is required, just whats in front of you”

more public information: I hope someone gets it soon…

After the custom encryption the flag is b64 encoded to prevent people from assuming the flag in the HTB[asdsdfs] format is plainly encrypted. KDY != HTB

also august and chris are 2 real people who are dead now they both have a field that is common and key to solving this challenge

I’m playing with a few ideas at the moment - is it fair to say that when deciphered, the total contents of flag.txt are not a single base 64 encoded string?

Is there anything else you can say about who August + Chris are without giving it away completely?

agreed. Cannt find anything on them. it’s just too much of a guessing game at this point. :frowning:

So the plaintext “Chris” is encrypted with the key “August left America”. It doesn’t make sense since the lengths are different

Type your comment> @Rainerd said:

agreed. Cannt find anything on them. it’s just too much of a guessing game at this point. :frowning:

I put on my tinfoil hat for a bit this evening and assumed they might be chemists and the the “Ne” in “StayNe” might mean Neon. This took me down a rabbit hole of chemical compound notations that went nowhere and severely broke my brain. On the plus side I figured out that chemtrails spread flouride onto crops and waterways to protect the locations of NSA stockpiles of Nazi gold.

Please send help.

Type your comment> @smidgey said:

Type your comment> @Rainerd said:

agreed. Cannt find anything on them. it’s just too much of a guessing game at this point. :frowning:

I put on my tinfoil hat for a bit this evening and assumed they might be chemists and the the “Ne” in “StayNe” might mean Neon. This took me down a rabbit hole of chemical compound notations that went nowhere and severely broke my brain. On the plus side I figured out that chemtrails spread flouride onto crops and waterways to protect the locations of NSA stockpiles of Nazi gold.

Please send help.

:lol: :lol:
I have spent so many hours looking into the history of Abraham Lincoln and Christopher Columbus that I just want to build my own boat and look for an island without internet so I never have to do a challenge like this again :lol:

I think this challenge was made to 404 our brains. :cold_sweat:

Type your comment> @Rainerd said:

Type your comment> @smidgey said:

Type your comment> @Rainerd said:

agreed. Cannt find anything on them. it’s just too much of a guessing game at this point. :frowning:

I put on my tinfoil hat for a bit this evening and assumed they might be chemists and the the “Ne” in “StayNe” might mean Neon. This took me down a rabbit hole of chemical compound notations that went nowhere and severely broke my brain. On the plus side I figured out that chemtrails spread flouride onto crops and waterways to protect the locations of NSA stockpiles of Nazi gold.

Please send help.

:lol: :lol:
I have spent so many hours looking into the history of Abraham Lincoln and Christopher Columbus that I just want to build my own boat and look for an island without internet so I never have to do a challenge like this again :lol:

I think this challenge was made to 404 our brains. :cold_sweat:

I can bring you the wood, I need to escape from this as well.

christopher columbus is the wrong christopher for 1.

my username is nothing to do with the challenge for 2.

not sure how abraham lincon is being factored into this… its August [redacted] and christopher [redacted]. If i ever make another challenge the hint will be a dead giveaway. I’m not sure my challenge should of been accepted in its current state…

@smidgey said:
I’m playing with a few ideas at the moment - is it fair to say that when deciphered, the total contents of flag.txt are not a single base 64 encoded string?

Is there anything else you can say about who August + Chris are without giving it away completely?

also the contents of flag .txt are encrypted with a cipher you have to make/ work out with the clues… this gives a b64 hash in the HTB[flag] format so everyone could technically work out the first part of the b64 clear text by reverse process. wont give you much but if you think you have the cipher it would confirm the first few characters of the ciphertext?

But we can’t guess the surname like this

a quick summary:
the cipher text is written in “august -left -america”
when decrypted you have “chris” [standard not left and not america]
when decrypted you have 1 b64 string that decoded gives you HTB[flag]
Chris and August are 2 real people both dead that share the same profession
no math is required.
you have and have used(probably every day) what you need to solve. this is also the field that both these men are known for.

only one surname is important and its August’s maybe it’s fair to say 99.9% of people who read this have used Chris in the last few moments- I know I am.

Any ideas yet guys? I’m still hitting a brick wall.