Chapter 1: BASIC TOOLS
In this section, discover basic tools available on the Hack tools page of the SchreckNet hub.
ASCII
Overview:
"ASCII (/ˈæskiː/ASS-kee), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of technical limitations of computer systems at the time it was invented, ASCII has just 128 code points, of which only 95 are printable characters, which severely limited its scope. Many computer systems instead use Unicode, which has millions of code points, but the first 128 of these are the same as the ASCII set." - Wikipedia
How to use:
Being one of the easiest encoding technique to use, ASCII is rather noticable, by its three digits by three digits format. All it takes to decrypt it is to simply copy the ASCII text, open the tool of your choice, paste your text, and done (see exemple on the right).
Practice:
In this exercice, a contact sent us an encrypted message, where to meet him for an information exchange. Your mission is rather simple:
Decrypt the message sent by the contact, to discover the rendez-vous location
Encoded message:
077 101 101 116 032 109 101 032 097 116 032 083 097 110 116 097 032 077 111 110 105 099 097 032 100 105 110 101 114 044 032 049 049 112 109 032 115 104 097 114 112 046
Decode message:
ASCII tool
Wanna know more about this type of encoding ?
See more here:
Morse
Overview:
"Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called dots and dashes, or dits and dahs. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of the inventors of the telegraph.
International Morse code encodes the 26 basic Latin letters a through z, one accented Latin letter (é), the Arabic numerals, and a small set of punctuation and procedural signals (prosigns). There is no distinction between upper and lower case letters. Each Morse code symbol is formed by a sequence of dits and dahs. The dit duration is the basic unit of time measurement in Morse code transmission. The duration of a dah is three times the duration of a dit. Each dit or dah within an encoded character is followed by a period of signal absence, called a space, equal to the dit duration. The letters of a word are separated by a space of duration equal to three dits, and words are separated by a space equal to seven dits.
Morse code can be memorized and sent in a form perceptible to the human senses, e.g. via sound waves or visible light, such that it can be directly interpreted by persons trained in the skill. Morse code is usually transmitted by on-off keying of an information-carrying medium such as electric current, radio waves, visible light, or sound waves. The current or wave is present during the time period of the dit or dah and absent during the time between dits and dahs." - Wikipedia
How to use:
Morse can be tricky when you have to decrypt an audio message with long and short bips in it. But when the code is written, same technique is used as in the ASCII section above: copy, open your tool to decrypt, paste, and voilà(see exemple on the left)!
As shown in the exemple, some converters don't handle special characters well (in this case, a blank space in the message got translated into "???"). Therefore, we recommand making your messages very simple if you are to encrypt into morse, so the recipient don't have too much trouble reading you.
Practice:
In this exercice, the contact never showed up at the previous rendez-vous point. But scrurring around, you found a note written in morse. You can guess what your new mission is:
Decrypt the message sent by the contact, to discover the rendez-vous location
Encoded message:
... --- .-. .-. -.-- ··--·- -.- .. -.. -.. --- ·-·-·- .... .- -.. ··--·- - --- ··--·- -... --- ..- -. -.-. . ·-·-·- -. . .-- ··--·- -.. .-. --- .--. ... .--. --- - ··--·- .. -. ··--·- .... --- .-.. .-.. -.-- .-- --- --- -.. ·-·-·-
Decode message:
Morse tool
Wanna know more about this type of encoding ?
See more here:
Binary
Overview:
"A binary code represents text, computer processor instructions, or any other data using a two-symbol system. The two-symbol system used is often "0" and "1" from the binary number system. The binary code assigns a pattern of binary digits, also known as bits, to each character, instruction, etc. For example, a binary string of eight bits (which is also called a byte) can represent any of 256 possible values and can, therefore, represent a wide variety of different items.
In computing and telecommunications, binary codes are used for various methods of encoding data, such as character strings, into bit strings. Those methods may use fixed-width or variable-width strings. In a fixed-width binary code, each letter, digit, or other character is represented by a bit string of the same length; that bit string, interpreted as a binary number, is usually displayed in code tables in octal, decimal or hexadecimal notation. There are many character sets and many character encodings for them.
A bit string, interpreted as a binary number, can be translated into a decimal number. For example, the lower case a, if represented by the bit string 01100001 (as it is in the standard ASCII code), can also be represented as the decimal number "97"." - Wikipedia
How to use:
Alongside ASCII, Binary is one of the most recognizable code you can find online. And just like the above exemples, you can decrypt binary by copying your text, opening the decoding tool, and paste your text (see exemple on the right).
Practice:
In this exercice, the contact gave more information about where to find the information we want:
Decrypt the message sent by the contact, to discover the exact location where to investigate
Encoded message:
01001101 01101001 01110100 01101110 01101001 01100011 01101011 00100000 01101100 01100101 01100110 01110100 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01010011 01101001 01101110 01000010 01101001 01101110
Decode message:
Binary tool
Wanna know more about this type of encoding ?
See more here:
Hexadecimal
Overview:
"In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base-16 or simply hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of sixteen. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using ten symbols, hexadecimal uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols "0"–"9" to represent values 0 to 9, and "A"–"F" (or alternatively "a"–"f") to represent values from ten to fifteen.
Software developers and system designers widely use hexadecimal numbers because they provide a human-friendly representation of binary-coded values. Each hexadecimal digit represents four bits (binary digits), also known as a nibble (or nybble). For example, an 8-bit byte can have values ranging from 00000000 to 11111111 in binary form, which can be conveniently represented as 00 to FF in hexadecimal.
Hexadecimal is used in the transfer encoding Base16, in which each byte of the plaintext is broken into two 4-bit values and represented by two hexadecimal digits." - Wikipedia
How to use:
At first glance, HEX can look very similar to ASCII. What differentiate them is the use of alphabetic letters in the encoding. But then again, nothing too hard to decrypt, as just like the above exemples, all you need to do is copy your HEX text, open your decoding tool, and paste it to decrypt it (see exemple on the left)
Practice:
In this exercice, you need to access the shop's computer in order to hack it. Your mission is:
Decrypt the message sent by the contact, to get the computer's password.
Encoded message:
53 69 6e 42 69 6e 27 73 20 63 6f 6d 70 75 74 65 72 20 70 61 73 73 77 6f 72 64 20 3a 20 64 69 72 74 79 64 6f 67
Decode message:
HEX tool
Wanna know more about this type of encoding ?
See more here:
Steganography
Overview:
"Steganography (/ˌstɛɡəˈnɒɡrəfi/STEG-ə-NOG-rə-fee) is the practice of representing information within another message or physical object, in such a manner that the presence of the information is not evident to human inspection. In computing/electronic contexts, a computer file, message, image, or video is concealed within another file, message, image, or video. The word steganography comes from Greek steganographia, which combines the words steganós (στεγανός), meaning "covered or concealed", and -graphia (γραφή) meaning "writing"." - Wikipedia
How to use:
Steganography is very good when it comes to share informations discretely. Concealing information in a picture, or even an audio file, it's easy to miss said information if we don't know where to look.
With the tool available on the SchreckNet hub, we're mainly focusing on image steganography. Like in the exemple displayed on the side, open the steganography tool, upload the file you think has some information hidden within, and hit the "read" button to display the secret message.
Practice:
In this exercice, you found a picture on the computer you just hacked, and somehow you have a feeling it has nothing to do here. Your task here is simple:
Try to find what the hell is going on with this picture.
Picture to analyse:
Decode message:
Steganography tool
Wanna know more about this type of encoding ?
See more here:
Brainfuck
Overview:
"Brainfuck is an esoteric programming language created in 1993 by Urban Müller.
Notable for its extreme minimalism, the language consists of only eight simple commands, a data pointer and an instruction pointer.
While it is fully Turing complete, it is not intended for practical use, but to challenge and amuse programmers.
Brainfuck requires one to break commands into microscopic steps.
The language's name is a reference to the slang term brainfuck, which refers to things so complicated or unusual that they exceed the limits of one's understanding,
as it was not meant or made for designing actual software but to challenge the boundaries of computer programming." - Wikipedia
How to use:
Uninformed users could first misinterpret brainfuck encoding with some glith, or programing code not supposed to be seen on a web page. But to informed user, noticing those series of + and - can make one wonder if this is a secret message or not. Just like the previous tools introduced above, the way to decode brainfuck is simple, copy the text, open the decoding tool, paste the text, and hit the "brainfuck to text" button (see exemple on the left)
Practice:
In previous exercice, while analysing the image's metadata, you found that the location where the picture comes from has been encoded, to prevent people from tracing it back to its origin. Your mission is:
Decrypt the encoded location to find out where this cryptic image comes from.
Encoded message:
+++++ ++[-> +++++ ++<]> +++++ .---- --.++ +++++ ++.<+ ++++[ ->--- --<]>
.<+++ +++[- >++++ ++<]> +++++ ++.<+ ++++[ ->+++ ++<]> +++++ .++++ +.---
----. <++++ ++++[ ->--- ----- <]>.< +++++ +++[- >++++ ++++< ]>+++ +++++
++++. <++++ +++++ [->-- ----- --<]> --.<+ +++++ +[->+ +++++ +<]>+ +++++
.<+++ [->++ +<]>+ .<+++ +[->+ +++<] >++++ ++++. <
Decode message:
HEX tool
Wanna know more about this type of encoding ?
See more here:
Chapter 2: ADVANCED TOOLS
&
Chapter 3: TRICKS
Coming soon
