Walk Through 2022 Kākācon Badge Challenge

25 Mar 2023 - karit

So 2022 saw the second Badge Challenge for Kākācon, this will walk you through the challenge. Don’t read this post if you don’t want spoilers. The Entry Point section contains the entry point, the sections after that are a walk through.

Entry Point

Some people may have been enjoying Pepper Raccoon’s on the front of the sticker, but others would have also noticed there was something printed on the backing paper: Back of the 2022 Kākācon sticker. The details of what is on the back is discussed just below.

Challenge 1

The back of the sticker above was the entry to the challenge. I would image people would have done something like:

Transcribe what was on the back:

vusoowuquei4kāk
 soowuquei4kākāc
 quei4kākācon.
  kākācon.nz/ao
      .nz/aok7v
     aok7vus

Then align them:

vusoowuquei4kāk
  soowuquei4kākāc
   quei4kākācon.
        kākācon.nz/ao
              .nz/aok7v
                 aok7vus

Which collapses to
```
vusoowuquei4kākācon.nz/aok7vus
```
Notice the pattern and overlap
```
kākācon.nz/aok7vusoowuquei4
```
Go to that URL.
Success step 1 complete

Challenge 2

The landing page for Challenge 1 has a series of bird images.

I envision it would have been solved something like:

Observe that some of hte images repeat.
Looking at the HTML observe that the images have a number suffix.
Guess it is some type of code

Map numbers to letters:

JF KYZJ ZJ KYV JVTFEU PVRI FW UFZEX R BRBRTFE SRUXV TYRCCVEXV. YFGVWLCCP PFL RIV VEAFPZEX UFZEX KYZJ TYRCCVEXV. QVRCREUZR ZJ R XIVRK GCRTV, RJJLDV PFL RXIVV? WFKSBXCWTQKXQYEJ

Guess a substitution cipher.

RSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

CyberChef can perform the decoding

Get

SO THIS IS THE SECOND YEAR OF DOING A KAKACON BADGE CHALLENGE. HOPEFULLY YOU ARE ENJOYING DOING THIS CHALLENGE. ZEALANDIA IS A GREAT PLACE, ASSUME YOU AGREE? FOTBKGLFCZTGZHNS

Add FOTBKGLFCZTGZHNS to URL
And the that is the completion page.