Unvreakable Vase

We are provided with prompt.txt, which reads

Plain text

1

zmxhz3tkb2vzx3roaxnfzxzlbl9jb3vudf9hc19jcnlwdg9vb30=

This seems to be base64 encoded but I think all the letters are converted to lowercase as hinted by squished and flat

Python

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import base64
data = 'zmxhz3tkb2vzx3roaxnfzxzlbl9jb3vudf9hc19jcnlwdg9vb30='
m1 = base64.b64decode(data)
print(m1)

#b'\xcela\xcf{dok\xf3\xc7z\xe8k\x19\xdf\xcf\x1c\xe5n_co{\xeeu\xffas_crypv\x0foo}'

Lets try captilizing the first ‘z’

Python

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import base64
data = 'zmxhz3tkb2vzx3roaxnfzxzlbl9jb3vudf9hc19jcnlwdg9vb30='
m1 = base64.b64decode(data)
print(m1)

#b'fla\xcf{dok\xf3\xc7z\xe8k\x19\xdf\xcf\x1c\xe5n_co{\xeeu\xffas_crypv\x0foo}'

Seems to be it, now our flag begins with fla.
All we need to do is keep capitalizing the letters of data such that base64 decoding results in a ASCII string which is readable.

One can do this by hand. NOT ME 😛

To automate this shit, lets take a look at how base64 actually works.
In base64, we have 64 possible characters, which means each base64 letter can hold 6 bits.
Which in turn means 4 base64 characters = 24 bits = 3 bytes
So instead of taking all 52 characters of prompt together and then checking 2**52 possibilities, we can simply take 4 characters at a time, and thenn checking 2**4 possibilites for output in the desired character set.

Python

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from base64 import b64decode as decode
from itertools import product

data = 'zmxhz3tkb2vzx3roaxnfzxzlbl9jb3vudf9hc19jcnlwdg9vb30='
CHARSET = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz_{}'


def case_variations(string):
    possibilities = []
    for char in string:
        possibilities.append([char.lower(), char.upper()])
    return ["".join(perm) for perm in product(*possibilities)]


flag = b""
real_data = ""
for i in range(0, len(data), 4):
    crib = data[i:i + 4]
    for case_variation in case_variations(crib):
        if all(chr(char) in CHARSET for char in decode(case_variation)):
            real_data += case_variation
            flag += decode(case_variation)
            print(flag)
            break

print(real_data)

Which prints out stuff

Python

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b'fla'
b'flag{d'
b'flag{does'
b'flag{does_th'
b'flag{does_this_'
b'flag{does_this_eve'
b'flag{does_this_even_c'
b'flag{does_this_even_coun'
b'flag{does_this_even_count_a'
b'flag{does_this_even_count_as_c'
b'flag{does_this_even_count_as_cryp'
b'flag{does_this_even_count_as_cryptoo'
b'flag{does_this_even_count_as_cryptooo}'
ZmxhZ3tkb2VzX3RoaXNfZXZlbl9jb3VudF9hc19jcnlwdG9vb30=

And our original base64 encoded string was 'ZmxhZ3tkb2VzX3RoaXNfZXZlbl9jb3VudF9hc19jcnlwdG9vb30='

flag{does_this_even_count_as_cryptooo}