Not Really a Writeup (edited)

Cats Writeup

While david was working on the What’s Good and Graphic, Valerie took a shot at one of the most high-valued problems in CSAW HSF - Cats (she’s a cat person). After waiting many hours downloading the enormous file (spending the time taking a shot at Ducks), she finally opened it, but was confused as to what she saw. She poked around a bit, and noted that there were 3 obvious files: a file named catz, an apparent keylogger, and a veracrypt installation. At this point, she figured that she had everything she needed, and proceeded to attempt to figure out what the heck the files did. Unfortunately, she came up with nothing.

At this point, david had finished Graphic, and quite bloated with self-satisfaction, decided to help his teammate on this problem. The ever assiduous david realized that Valerie must be missing something, and upon further inspection, discovered the existence of a .bash_history file. Wish his ego even more inflated than before, david decided that his teammates were commoners, not worthy of his help, and proceeded to spend a few hours playing osu. This would prove to be a deadly mistake (he later lost the competition by 76 minutes, but that's a story for another time).

Meanwhile, Valerie had finally tired of david’s flaunting personality, deciding that she would solve Cats herself in order to one-up him and at the same time bash some humility into him. She dug around the file, her first instinct directing her towards bash_rc. Unfortunately, her CTF specialty was not in this field, so she couldn’t understand what the file said. At this point, her stubbornness caved, and she finally consulted her teammate Jimmy for help. Though Jimmy had been very responsibly studying for his SATs that weekend, as well as preparing for an upcoming history project, he absolutely could not refuse the pleadings of the teammate whom he considered to be like a sister to him. Thus, he agreed to take a look at the problem (first waiting another few hours for the file to download).

Jimmy, a very experienced competitor, glanced at the file and immediately understood what was going on. He knew that there was something interesting, something hidden, and he proceeded to mess around with the files, until he figured out what it was - a volume of random files. Unfortunately, his practice SATs started crying his name, and he absolutely could not ignore their pitiful laments. Thus, he left, and Valerie was once again on her own.

But not for long. For david, who had just had his pride deflated by ten subsequent losses to an osu-god by the name of IOException, decided that he was done with osu. For then. He figured the best way to reestablish his genius was to figure out the problem that Valerie and Jimmy had spent the last day doing. He downloaded the file( in 10 minutes because his mother had gotten a super high-speed internet plan) and quickly consulted Jimmy to figure out their progress, for he believed that asking anything of Valerie was beneath him. He[did a bunch of stuff] to extract the volume files.

He then proceeded to use his favorite trick, his secret weapon; essentially his ace-in-the-hole. This was his trump card, in the most literal sense. He proceeded to call his friends in the underworld (for he had made quite a few of them back in elementary school), and arranged the kidnapping of Donald Trump. While he was at it, he also kidnapped Hillary Clinton for good measure. He proceeded to take pictures of the two candidates in various halloween costumes, and ordered two decks of cards, each with the pictures of one politician printed on them. He had also planned on getting some Obama cards, but sadly he had run out of money, and hiring mercenaries for these kidnappings was EXPENSIVE.

Anyways, moving on, david chalked a pentagram on the wood of his bedroom floor, and lit candles at the five corners. He proceeded to chant ominously for 2 hours, waving the cards and burning them at the candle tips. After a burning 2 hours, his bedroom was covered in ash, and yet his one and only god Michelle had yet to send him a signal or a clue to the flag. Frustrated, david decided to just randomly grep for things in the file, for that is what he did when he didn’t know what else to do. He opened the file, and grepped for ‘flag{’. Somehow, it worked. His pride restored, he proceeded to brag to Valerie. Valerie, upset that she had once again failed to defeat david, proceeded to buy a beautiful orange tabby (for she WAS a cat person). She broke a window of david’s house and dropped the cat in. The rest is better left unsaid.

Thus, in the end, david solved the problem (like he always did), Valerie established her status as a crazy but effective cat lady, and Jimmy got 120% on his history project and a perfect score on his SAT. And after solving the problem, david completely forgot his solution, leading to me writing this ridiculous story to make up for it. That is the story of anomat (or how it would be if my life was more interesting). See you soon! And mind your language!