“Strings it” is a pycoGym challenge where we are asked to find the flag in the file without running it
to solve this, I was first curious by clicking on the word in blue on the description “file”, by clicking, the download will start, the downloaded file is called strings
in the task description, they ask if we can find the flag without running the file
hint : strings it
by searching on strings here is the result :
Ah, you’re using the strings command. Now I understand what you're trying to do.
The strings command is a powerful tool that can extract printable strings from files, regardless of their type. This can be helpful in finding flags, hidden messages, or other text embedded within files, especially executables.
man stringsby reading briefly the manuel it is possble to see that is command returns the user all the strings that are in the file given as an argument
let see the command :
we look for the picoCTF{}
Let breakdown the cmd :
the pipe command which is | is responsible to send output of the command strings as input to the grep command
the grep command will search the output received by the pipe “|” command lines that have the substring “picoCTF”
i choose the substring “picoCTF” because the format of flag.txt = picoCTF{‘’’’}
As you can see the flag
thank you
stay hard
