deciphering

[cool dude]

i'm just wondering how you would go about deciphering things. for example i downloaded this math problem where u have to enter some key to get an answer. the question though is where do i start?

here's the program

[Tony]

Quote:

All executable puzzles on this site will be Pentium - Windows executables unless otherwise stated.

I don't have... ether. Though the text file said that anything goes. Any clues in a screenshot?

[cool dude]

Tony wrote:

Quote:

All executable puzzles on this site will be Pentium - Windows executables unless otherwise stated.

I don't have... ether. Though the text file said that anything goes. Any clues in a screenshot?

i don't think there are clues in the screen shot. when i press a key and press enter it says incorrect key. this is all the information i have, thus i have no clue wat to do. maybe somehow u can read the code of the program but i'm grasping at straws. this is supposed to be easy because its one of the easy puzzles lol.

here's the screen shot

Martin says: Use .png files! The file went from over 450kb to 8kb!

[cool dude]

k i tried another problem they had. this one is really wierd too. here's an attachment. anyone can open it becauuse this time its some picture and in that picture there is supposed to be some kinda message. however i have no clue wat it is since its all black! it won't even change the background colour. any clues would be appreciated.

[md]

look into stenograpy. doing a google will probably help lots

[cool dude]

Cornflake wrote:

look into stenograpy. doing a google will probably help lots

i did. it did help in explaining what it is, and why its used. but i still have no clue on how to solve it. i'm guessing that the message is saved in another file but where? i did a search of the file name looking on the c drive and only found the picture file nothing else.

[md]

I don't think you uderstood... stenography is hiding a message in a picture. You'll probably want to be looking at the BMP if htat's what they gave you; re-encoding as a png might have removed some of the information.

[cool dude]

actually its a GIF. so i changed it into a BMP which let me change the background colour. however even when i changed the background colour i didn't find any message. any suggestions?

[[Gandalf]]

I doubt it would be that simple... Try looking into some other possible ways messages have been hidden in pictures in the past, that might give you some inspiration.

[Ultrahex]

The Black Image is WAYYYY TOO large for just a black background, if you make your own GIF file that is the exact same demensions etc the file doesn't have A LOT OF 0's in it so therefore you must either remove a certain number of 0's or something along those lines... just a note

[cool dude]

Ultrahex wrote:

The Black Image is WAYYYY TOO large for just a black background, if you make your own GIF file that is the exact same demensions etc the file doesn't have A LOT OF 0's in it so therefore you must either remove a certain number of 0's or something along those lines... just a note

wat do u mean by "0's" ? and how would u remove them

[Tony]

You need to know what mode the colors are in.

The word you want is stegonaut

[bugzpodder]

is it just my broswer (firefox 1.5) or are there no attachments? anyways u'd start by comparing deciphered result with english dictionaries, brute forcing/dictionary attack and /or making histograms, which are all basic deciphering techniques.