Description

"When we analyze software from previous eras, we're essentially interpreting artifacts from digital civilizations that no longer exist in their original form. We look for signatures, patterns, anomalies - just as archaeologists examine pottery shards for cultural markers." This mantra from your cyber archeologist team leader Dr. Elijah Okafor resonates in your head. Following your mission of pursuing old software from previously vanished civilizations, you heard of a mysterious system remaining on and went with your team to the location from where detected activity came from.

From the runes your team was able to decipher, once upon a time, a 4 people gang developped
a piece of software no one has heard of until now. One of them liked chiffrofêtes, with cybersous,
another one loved making useless games. A third one was born on earth only to reinvent the wheel 
and constantly rebuild the objects he used. The last one dedicated a passion for weird machines. All of
them dedicated a cult for building the most complex and intricate code ciment so that no one could 
ever recover the secret it held.

Your associates made huge progress on these runes, yet you wonder: how did they managed to get the meaning
of chiffrofête from the runes?

Avoiding this question, you get your eyes on the rock above you. Apparently, the hard work remains.
Millions of little runes, apparently grouped in a Trente-deuzet form, were sculpted on it, as well as
a strange lobster. You finally merged all the characters and obtained a specimen of a rare and vanished
format your team previously recovered. It seems the PDF you got was a receipe for building the network,
but you suspect it contains hidden gem and decided to process it for further investigation.

Your mission is to analyze the relics found by your team, and to discover as much as possible about the internals of these weird pieces you just unveiled. Once your goal achieved, you'll record all of your discoveries about the vanished civilization.

Help the team to discover what secret is embeded within the ancient runes at https://static.sstic.org/challenge2025/strange_sonnet.pdf.

Good luck!

PS: A little anti-frustration-stegaguess hint: for each new image you get for step0 (in the expected order, from the main support first two), there is a visual way to confirm you are on the right path.

Rules

• The challenge is open to all individuals, except members of SSTIC's steering and program committees, as well as members of the organization team.
• In order to be eligible, participants must find an e-mail address ([0-9a-f]{64}[a-z_]+@sstic.org), send an e-mail to this address, and then send a write-up of their solution to the challenge before the end date of the challenge.
• Write-ups shall be written in either French or English, and be as detailed as possible. They will be evaluated by a judging panel consisting of both the challenge authors and SSTIC's steering committee.
• The challenge runs from 04/25/2025 18:00:00 GMT+2 to 05/25/2025 18:00:00 GMT+2
• A participant may compete in both categories and win multiple prizes.
• This is an individual challenge: teams are not allowed to participate. However, the "call-a-friend" option is tolerated.
• By submitting an entry, participants agree on having their solution published on this page and associated to their name (or pseudonym).
• In order to claim prizes, winners are required to share their identity with the STIC association.
• The challenge may be extended if there are less than three valid solves.
• Do not attack the challenge infrastructure in any way. There is no need to run automated tools such as scanners nor to conduct any network bruteforce.

Prizes

To be communicated (but you don't play for prizes, do you?)

Contact

Please write to challenge2025 on domain sstic.org for any question or issue.

Root

Challenge made by Alka & x86-sec (bmorgan)