Secret Meeting

Category: Crypto

Author: Adarsh Kishore

Answer / Flag: MAZE{meEt_@_W1nter_del1}

Problem Statement

Jon Snow is organizing a secret meetings of the rulers of the seven kingdoms to organise a plan to defeat the three-headed dragon Targaryn. In order that the spies of the dragon do not discover this, he sends a coded message 8437385373703739737382373883731163731163739037385373863734837388373483736637310237386373122373703731173731003737137386373121373883735037382373108373983736837370373573736137361 to everyone. To find the location, you must decode it. There is also a scroll accompanied with it: remember the most important numbers in our world.

Hint

1) There is a number occuring quite frequently in the message.

2) Does the “==” at the end tell you something?

Solution

The given text has 373 acting as a separator. If we split() it with 373 as a delimeter, we will get ['84', '85', '70', '97', '82', '88', '116', '116', '90', '85', '86', '48', '88', '48', '66', '102', '86', '122', '70', '117', '100', '71', '86', '121', '88', '50', '82', '108', '98', '68', '70', '57', '61', '61'].

On converting each number to its ASCII equivalent and joining the characters, we get TUFaRXttZUV0X0BfVzFudGVyX2RlbDF9==. The == at the end suggests base64 encoding.

On decoding it in base64, we get the flag MAZE{meEt_@_W1nter_del1}. The process is outlined in solution.py.