Day 02: Chinese Animals

Description

I’ve received this note from a friend, who is a Chinese CTF player:

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恭喜！收旗爲：ＨＶ２０｛獭慬氭敬敧慮琭扵瑴敲晬礭汯癥猭杲慳猭浵搭桯牳ｅ｝

Unfortunately, Google Translate wasn’t of much help:

I suspect the data has somehow been messed up while transmitting it.

Sadly, I can’t ask my friend about more details. The Great Chinese Firewall is thwarting our attempts to reach each other, and there’s no way I’m going to install WeChat on my phone.

Solution

Google Translate gives the following:

Congratulations: 恭喜
Flag collection: 收旗爲

While attempting to convert it into utf16, it turned out that was the solution?

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$ iconv -f UTF-8 -t UTF-16LE writeupfiles/dec2.txt
msla-llegena-tubttrelf-yolev-srgsa-sum-dohsrE
$ iconv -f UTF-8 -t UTF-16BE writeupfiles/dec2.txt
small-elegant-butterfly-loves-grass-mud-horsE

or the python approach:

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>>> ct = '獭慬氭敬敧慮琭扵瑴敲晬礭汯癥猭杲慳猭浵搭桯牳'
>>> ct.encode("utf-16be")
b'small-elegant-butterfly-loves-grass-mud-hors'

and just add the e at the end from the original challenge to get the flag:

Flag