Briefing
Greetings, Special Agent.
As you might know, the end of the year is always signified with a massive uptick in cyber attacks. Particularly DDoS and Ransomware attacks are commonplace during this time of the year. It’s also the time of the year for agencies worldwide, to crack down on the criminal enterprises destroying the downtime of IT personnel everywhere. Our good friends over at the FBI have done just that. Yesterday morning around 0400 UTC they were able to seize a warehouse full of C2 servers, crypto miners and an entire scam call-center rolled int one.
During this bust, several laptops of key individuals were confiscated. There was however one laptop of which the owner was able to wipe the disk, right as the raid was happening. The FBI was able to recover most of the files, but is left puzzled at several of them. You might already feel this one coming. One of these archives was sent our way to be investigated. Find out what you can about the file inside the archive. It seems to have been damaged beyond the point of recovery, but the FBI has hopes our best and brightest can uncover something.
As always, Special Agent, the contract is yours, if you choose to accept.
Materials
Answer Instruction
Use the answer to unlock the flagfile, this will reward you with your badge.
The answer starts with “flag-“
MD5 Checksum for The Archive:
2625ae7c180080e580551347831362d7
Flagfile
Be advised, the flagfile is an encrypted ZIP. Make sure your OS supports the ZIP format. Ensure the password contains no hidden characters or formatting, paste in Notepad first if the password doesn’t seem to work.
Creator(s): Frank Diepmaat