Maveris OSINT Olympics CTF
Maveris kindly released their OSINT Olympic CTF (Capture The Flag) to the public, and I thoroughly enjoyed participating. The CTF comprises of 26 questions, with points ranging from 50 to 150, increasing in difficulty.
In this blog, I have provided samples of three questions within the CTF, and how I went about answering them. Interestingly, the diversity of tools and techniques available in the field means that there could be diverse analytical methods for answering the same question.
From my experience with the CTF I found that there were two different ways to capture this flag. My first instinct was to download the image and conduct a reverse image search. After reading the question again, the hint ‘metadata’ proved to me that there may be another method to answering the question. I explore both options below.
Method 1
I first conducted a reverse image search using Yandex, as I have found this search engine to be incredibly reliable in the past for reverse image searching. However surprisingly, no results of interest were found, as it provided similar images but no exact matches. This led me to utilising Google for the task, which provided me with the following article:
By placing ‘Stadium of Epidaurus’ in Google maps, the answer was provided — Stadium of the Asclepieion of Epidaurus.
Method 2
Another method to find the location is through acquiring the metadata of the image. Downloading the image from the CTF and uploading it to an image metadata viewer provided me with the relevant metadata and the following coordinates: 37.597626, 23.074180.
Of note, had this image only been uploaded onto a social media platform like Facebook or Twitter and not the article mentioned above, the metadata would not be viewable. This because several social media sites strip all metadata.
Placing these coordinates in Google maps provides the following location –
I conducted the following search below which provided me with the individual ‘George S. Patton’.
For searches of deceased persons, the Find a Grave website is a good tool for international cases. By searching for the person of interest, it provided me with an image of his gravestone and thus the answer, ‘General Third Army’. Of note, many cemeteries also have their own deceased person database searches via their website.
Another useful website available is the Traces of War, which goes into detail regarding various wars, sights, cemeteries in countries worldwide, a list of related persons who have been buried there and the war medals they have obtained. An example is shown below.
Searches of the 1996 Olympic games provided me with three differing sports highlighted below:
My searches for volleyball found no results in relation to October 2019. I then tried mountain biking, using the Google filter tool searching for information within the key timeframe (October 2019), which provided a hit.
Several social media videos and photos were uploaded onto the highlighted website, however this image had Mount Fuji in the background. The answer is ‘France’, highlighted below.
Do you know of any alternative ways/tools that can assist with answering the questions I’ve addressed above?
Any questions please leave a comment and thank you for reading!
