0 weekly points · Practice mode
#A Stark Industries Security Incident
#The Breach
June 2026. Stark Industries' authentication servers went dark after a coordinated strike. Production systems were isolated, containment held. But in the chaos of remediation, something was overlooked.
The E.D.I.T.H. fallback portal. An emergency bridge intended to run for 48 hours. A quick fix by a tired team. It was scheduled for shutdown on day 3.
Six weeks later, nobody noticed it was still running.
By the time the Security team found the gap, the attackers were already gone. What remained was a backup archive recovered from the compromised build server. Encrypted. Fragmented. Waiting to be understood.
Inside are the pieces of what happened. Logs. Binary artifacts. Blueprints. The encryption keys to all of it are hidden, layered, demanding proof that you understand the system before revealing their secrets.
Your task: extract, analyze, and prove your identity to the fallback system. Follow the clues embedded in the archive. Think like the engineers who built it. Break the cryptography that protected it.
Each discovery leads to the next. There are multiple layers. The flag is what remains when all of them are stripped away.
#Files
Important
Two files. One archive. Everything else you need is encrypted inside.
| File | Description |
|---|---|
auth_backup.sba | The backup from the compromised build server. Contains configuration, logs, binaries, and embedded forensic artifacts. (8.30 MB) |
sba_extract.py.broken | A damaged extraction utility recovered from the same server. Three critical functions have been deliberately corrupted. You must understand and repair them. (10.6 KB) |
That's all you get. No walkthroughs. No hints beyond what the archive itself contains.
#What Happens Next
Objective
- Download the files.
- Read the extraction script carefully.
- Understand what it's trying to do.
- Fix what's broken.
- Extract the archive.
- Find the README inside.
The system will verify your progress as you go. Complete each stage and the next one unlocks.
#Flag
Submit the complete flag in the format
rvcectf{...}.
Good luck!
Files
Hints
free · practice modeHint 1view
#Hint 1 · Repair the Broken Tools
You hold a shattered extraction script and an archive that refuses to open. The engineers who broke it left something behind—not instructions, but riddles. Read the function comments carefully. They speak in metaphor, but metaphor here means precision.
The escape marker 0xBC is a gateway. When you encounter it, something follows that changes everything. The system's true name sleeps in plaintext logs—find BUILD SERVER: and what comes after is power. Transform that name through fire (a cryptographic flame), and you forge the key that unlocks everything.
Hint
RLE compression uses escape sequences that speak in two languages: one thing becomes itself, or one thing multiplies across silence. RC4's second phase whispers back into itself—the keystream touches the very index that summoned it.
Tip
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