Layers

##Challenge Name: Layers

###Solves

• >Solves: 126
• >Points: 50

###Description

Weird way to encode your data, but OK! 🤷‍♂️

Attachment: layers.zip

###Approach

1. >

   Initial Steps:

   • >Extracted the provided layers.zip file and found several files numbered from 0 to 55.
   • >Concatenated all the files from 0 to 55 using the following script:
     bash

     for i in {0..55}; do cat "$i" done
   • >The concatenated output was a long binary string:

     0011001001001101001110010100111001010010011110000011010101001110010100100101011001110101010011100101011001001110010001000111101001111010011000010110001101110011011001110111001101010110010010000101001101010101010011100100111000111001011001000101011001001010010100110100111001100010011110100011001101100110011010100101010101101010010011100100001001001001011010100101010101100100011010110101001101100110011110100011100101100101010001000110111101010011

   • >Converting the binary string to text didn't make much sense initially:

     2M9NRx5NRVuNVNDzzacsgsVHSUNN9dVJSNbz3fjUjNBIjUdkSfz9eDoS

2. >

   Discovering the Timestamp-based Order:

   • >After some tinkering, it became clear that the files were extracted randomly. I noticed the timestamps on the files.
   • >The files should be concatenated in order of their last modification timestamps (oldest to latest), not based on their filenames.
   • >To fix this, ran the following command to list the files by modification time and concatenate them in the correct order:
     bash

     ls -ltr | awk '{print $9}' | tail -n +2 | xargs -I{} cat {}

   

3. >

   Binary to Text:

   • >After rearranging the files based on their timestamps, the new binary string appeared:

     0101001101010101001101010101010101010011010101010110010001010011010100110101011001010010010010100110010101111010011001000110111101001101001100110100100101111010010011100101011000111001011100110100111001001000011010110111101001100011011010100101011001100110010011100111101001000010011001100100111000110010011001110111100001001110010101100011100101101010011000010100010001010010011100110110001001000100010011100111010101001110011010100100111000111001

   • >Converting this binary string to ASCII text:

     SU5USUdSSVRJezdoM3IzNV9sNHkzcjVfNzBfN2gxNV9jaDRsbDNuNjN9

4. >

   Decoding Base64:

   • >The string looked like base64 encoded data.
   • >Decoded the base64 string to get the flag:

     INTIGRITI{7h3r35_l4y3r5_70_7h15_ch4ll3n63}

   

###Flag

INTIGRITI{7h3r35_l4y3r5_70_7h15_ch4ll3n63}