Falaj 10: Two Encodings

Encoding changes how data is written, not who can read it. A file that looks like nonsense is often just text in another representation, and analysts learn to recognise the common ones by their alphabet: base64 uses letters, digits and a couple of symbols, and often ends in one or two equals signs, while hexadecimal uses only the digits and the letters a to f.

The note in your home directory has been encoded twice. Work out the outer encoding first, undo it, look at what you get, and then undo the inner one. base64 -d decodes the first kind, and a reverse hex conversion turns hexadecimal text back into characters. Do not assume the order: look at the data at each step.

Nothing here is protected by a key. That is the point of the exercise. This is a simulated shell over invented files: it understands a teaching subset of commands, and help lists them. When you have the password for level 11, run login 11 <password> or paste it into the answer box.