Wrong Spooky Season

Platform: HackTheBox | Category: Forensics | Difficulty: Very Easy | Author: D3v0o0Nu11 | Date: 2026-02-10

Description

"I told them it was too soon and in the wrong season to deploy such a website, but they assured me that theming it properly would be enough to stop the ghosts from haunting us. I was wrong." Now there is an internal breach in the Spooky Network and you need to find out what happened. Analyze the the network traffic and find how the scary ghosts got in and what they did.

Solution Approach

Core idea: Identify the weakness from source review or fingerprinting first. Iterate with incremental payloads instead of guessing.

Steps

1. First, unzip the .zip file.

2. Strings the .pcap file.

3. Looks like there's a reversed base64 encoded text.

4. Reverse the strings first, then decode it.

REVERSE THE STRING

 cpp read-only • copy allowed Copy
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
    system("clear");
    char strings[] = {"==gC9FSI5tGMwA3cfRjd0o2Xz0GNjNjYfR3c1p2Xn5WMyBXNfRjd0o2eCRFS"};
    for(int i = strlen(strings); i >= 0; i--)
    {
        printf("%c", strings[i]);
    }

    return 0;
}

OUTPUT

DECODE IT

1. Got the flag!

Flag

REDACTED

Lessons Learned

1. Identify the weakness from source review or fingerprinting first.
2. Iterate with incremental payloads instead of guessing.
3. Reuse the same pattern in future engagements.