systems-2022-editorials

Editorials for Silicon Maze Systems Track 2022

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Secret Meeting 2

Category: Misc (Git+Linux)

Author: Adarsh Kishore

Answer / Flag: MAZE{/*=<Casterly_Rock!#>~_^}

Problem Statement

Jon Snow has organized yet another meeting with the seven kingdoms. To ensure utmost secrecy, he has chosen the location in a maze shaped like a tree, with an entrance of deception, with several branches inside the maze, many of which lead to deadends. At the end, he has finally revealed the actual location to go to.

Help Targaryen retrieve the message in the maze.

Relevant files / links

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xeTxq2t-g5wm7x99FDojg2p0dbWGOWK8/view?usp=sharing

Hint

  1. Why not see what’s inside the folder?
  2. Not all commits are referenced by branches

Solution

The given file system has a folder What's in a name?. Going inside, we can see that it is in fact a .git folder, hinted by calling it a maze with an entrance of deception. Rename it accordingly to reveal several branches, and a detached HEAD. It is in form of a tree, as hinted in the problem statement.

Initial Setup

If we do git checkout f_loc, then we can see there is a zip file, which is password protected: Zip

Password

The password for this has its fragments distributed all over the commit history. There are several deadends and only three commits actually contain any data:

  1. pAss in clue1~3 as written in flag as You have reached the first part of the key - 'pAss'...Keep looking for more
  2. Word in clue2a~1 or clue2a^ as written in flag as The second part is "Word"... One more remains
  3. -is-Winterfell in clue3c~2

Joining them, the password is revealed to be pAssWord-is-Winterfell which unzips the file. Inside there is a file give_the_flag which does not have executable permissions. A simple chmod will do the trick and on executing it outputs the flag MAZE{/*=<Casterly_Rock!#>~_^}.

flag