Steghide Audio

Category: FORENSICS · Difficulty: Basic · Points: 100 · Challenge: 481

Background

Regional listening stations intercepted an encrypted acoustic carrier pulse over VHF frequencies. Intelligence confirms the message modulates high-frequency phase shifts into an ambient WAV recording. Extract the hidden dispatch. FORMAT: FLAG{ }

Analysis

The evidence file is 590 bytes and carries a generator marker followed by a single configuration line. Reading printable runs across the file recovers the value directly:

$ strings -n 8 evidence-039.raw
[FORENSIC_TRIAGE_TARGET_039]
CONFIDENTIAL_FLAG=FLAG{cwa2026_80d24828cc6f7a34}

The file holds no filesystem image, no archive structure and no encoded payload beyond the plaintext line above. Despite the extension and the description, no WAV container, stego embedding or passphrase is present, so the extraction step described in the brief was not required.

Result

FLAG{cwa2026_80d24828cc6f7a34}