Treasure Hunt Volume 2

 $ Welcome to the Digital Treasure Hunt! Your first clue is hidden in a file. Use the program "hexedit" to find it. Good luck!

$ hexedit clue1.jpg

# scroll through the hex code until you find the message: "Arthur Conan Doyle once said: 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' Find the next clue in the image file and proceed to the next step."

$ cd ~/Pictures/

$ ls

clue1.jpg clue2.png

$ stegolsb reveal clue2.png

The message reads: "Herman Melville once said: 'It is not down on any map; true places never are.' Look for a file with a hidden attribute in the home directory and find the next clue."

$ cd ~/

$ ls -a

. .. .clue3.txt

$ cat .clue3.txt

The message reads: "Richard Dawkins once said: 'Science is not a body of facts ... it is a way of thinking.' Look for the next clue in a file with an encrypted file name in the Documents folder."

$ cd ~/Documents/

$ ls

sfs231f.dmg

$ openssl enc -d -aes256 -in sfs231f.dmg -out clue4.txt

enter aes-256-cbc decryption password:

# enter password: "scienceismyreligion"

$ cat clue4.txt

The message reads: "Neil Gaiman once said: 'Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.' Look for a hidden file in the Downloads folder and find the next clue."

$ cd ~/Downloads/

$ ls -a

. .. clue5.txt .hidden_file

$ cat .hidden_file

The message reads: "HP Lovecraft once said: 'The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.' Look for a file with a hidden extension in the Videos folder and find the next clue."

$ cd ~/Videos/

$ ls -a

. .. clue6.DAT

$ mv clue6.DAT clue6.txt

$ cat clue6.txt | base64 -d > clue7.tar.gz

$ tar -zxvf clue7.tar.gz

clue7.txt

$ cat clue7.txt

The message reads: "Douglas Adams once said: 'I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.' Look for a hidden directory in the root folder and find the next clue."

$ cd /

$ ls -a

. .. .hidden_folder

$ cd .hidden_folder/

$ ls

clue8.pdf

$ qpdf --decrypt --password='hidden' clue8.pdf - > clue8.txt

$ cat clue8.txt

The message reads: "Isaac Asimov once said: 'The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..."'. Congratulations, you have found the treasure!"