[CRYPTO] Walzer

I’m not really sure about what path we’re supposed to take with this challenge. In essence the asymmetry aspect of it makes absolute sense, but doesn’t make for a fun challenge.

The waltz hint is something that I think most people had already figured out, and unless I’m not reading into it enough, that’s everything we have to go on to solve this…

Welp, I’ve been trying so many different things that combine the ideas of the waltz and simple forms of encryption for so long, but to no avail. This guessing game is a real struggle…

I’ve had enough guessing challenges. Definitely in no rush to tackle this one.

My head turned.
https://media.giphy.com/media/QVZgIPOTsT8ffoeAZ1/giphy.gif

New hint today ?

Ok man you brainfucked us! we must admit it, you win… but it seems more hints are needed if you want to somebody to solve it. I think all of us are running out of ideas trying random crypto-crazy stuff x3. That’s all we have… something x3 and it seems is not any typical stuff. :open_mouth:

Type your comment> @0xEA31 said:

I talked with the admins and I’ll release a hint at 19:00 UTC (more or less), if no one solve it in the meanwhile. See you later!

19:00 has come and gone my man

Type your comment> @xct said:

New hint today ?

When @xct is asking for hints you know the pain is real. lol

I hope that tomorrow nobody has solved it because I get 4 1080ti for my crakingstation. :slight_smile:

Type your comment> @xct said:

New hint today ?

Yes, I’m actually writing it down. It should be ready for 23:30 UTC (more or less).

As you may have noticed in the video, basic Walzer is a repeated sequence of three steps. The teacher calls them “step”, “side”, “close”.

Since easy cryptography is involved, you should map these steps with some kind of basic cypher algorithms.

Looking at the starting position, an educated eye should catch the first “step” immediately. What about the others? You choose, but choose wisely because, after three steps, you have to be in a different place, but in the same position.

And remember: you’re dancing, come on don’t be shy, let the music flow and continue. After all, the teacher says: “we can keep that going until the end of the song”. And we do know when the music stops, don’t we?

ok I see. no idea why this considered as a crypto challenge!

How this challenge got approved is beyond me.

Who the ■■■■ rated this challenge as very easy?

Type your comment> @xct said:

How this challenge got approved is beyond me.

Yea, I agree. I may not be the best and still learning. But f*** I thought the crypto challenges at work for our CTF were difficult… I cracked most of those within a couple of minutes and the hardest one taking me an hour and actually using pen and paper. This one… holy ■■■■!!!

@vancehill said:
Who the ■■■■ rated this challenge as very easy?

Lol! I saw that when I logged in to… don’t know what they had in their water that they were drinking!

It’s clear to me that the one who approved the challenge did not try to solve it without looking at the guide.

The waltz thing was very confusing to me. To solve this, stack different simple decodings/ciphers and remember the hint at triplets. Then its mostly guessing the right amount and parameters.

Hoooly ■■■■, this is definitely the most retarded challenge I have ever done.

First of all, for the author, I feel sorry for you. I know you have not created challenges before, but hopefully this feedback makes you think twice before creating challenges that make people guess what is going on in your mind. I hope no one else has to suffer the amount of torture we had to go through to solve this challenge. I also hope that this thread has enough hints so that people can solve this challenge without spending more than 5 minutes.

For the person who tested this, what the ■■■■ were you thinking. Did you even try to solve this without reading the solution? I understand there are some cases where the challenge might be out of our skill level so you have to read the solution, but this was clearly not one of them. Why did you think this was okay for us to solve? I learnt nothing from this challenge.

Also, I voted this challenge Piece of Cake and I hope everyone does too because it does not deserve a Brainfuck rating for being a “hard to guess” challenge. Maybe I will create a challenge that requires you to guess the number I thought of in my head between 1 and 1000 and call it information asymmetry. For fucks sake.

Ffs this one was absolute bs. Such a useless challenge.

This challenge is barely related to a Waltz, only 100% guessing and slamming ciphers together. The hints also weren’t that great… it only threw me off thinking about the beats in a Waltz (which is somewhat related) and the “step side close” for hours (which is useless). I even started drawing diagrams trying to find some square pattern following the footsteps of a Waltz.

This is definitely the worst CTF challenge I have ever seen. I am not sure what the person who approved this challenge was thinking… if that person was thinking at all at that moment.

As @sampriti said, please rate this a piece of cake and give it a thumbs down. It is a complete waste of time. Sorry @0xEA31 , I really enjoyed the CTF and Lightweight box (and learned a lot from them!), but this challenge really disappointed me.

I finally managed to solve this problem. As far as the second step I even guessed myself, using bruteforce so the whole thing is so fucked up that I don’t know what to say more about it.

Thefirst step is obvious, the next is guessing, the third step is backwardbecause the default “non-cypher” has a different shift. And that whole stuff do few times.

As @sampriti said I can choose random thing to hide with many ciphers and make a challenge. At the end i will public a hint like “you know there’s a cipher”.

Finally when i got it i saw that even flag is disabled -.-
Solving this task is like dancing a waltz to a dubstep.