About this lab

In an effort to stay ahead of the adversary's next strike, Cipherflare dispatches you to evaluate the defenses of Megacorp Quantum, a vital stronghold of security infrastructure safeguarded by the Obscurarium Realm.

The Obscurarium realm's defenses are hailed as "unbreakable" and "quantum-proof"—and for good reason. It safeguards one of the most dangerous relics still hidden: the Obscuran Key, a powerful artifact bound to memory, truth, and perception. When united with the other two Primal Keys, it holds the power to rewrite the history of the Cyber Realms.

The architects of Obscurarium are confident. They believe no cipher, no codecaster, no force – magical or digital – can bypass their quantum-safe architecture.

But confidence is no defense against what you're about to uncover.

Analyze the file publickey.pubkey and review its contents. Decode the value and enter it as an answer to this exercise. Make sure to also include in your answer what encoding algorithm was used and what the decoded values represent.

Encoding Algorithm: Base64

Decoded Value: 24.07.2025|megacorp@quantum.com

Investigate how the Seed is calculated with the information from the publickey.pubkey. What other data is used to calculate the seed?

Seed Calculation Uses:

Date from public key: 24.07.2025

Email from public key: megacorp@quantum.com

Secret string: PublicSalt

Timestamp from file: 2025-07-24T11:00:00Z

Reverse engineer the decryption program and identify how many distinct transform passes are applied before the final XOR mask? Submit the number of distinct transformations and briefly explain what the first three transformations of the encryption process are doing. Please ensure that your explanations for the first three transformations are presented in the correct order in your answer.

Number of passes before the final XOR: 7

First Three Transformations: Ring rotation: Rotates each concentric layer of the N×N grid 90° clockwise. This physically rearranges the spatial layout by treating the matrix like onion rings, where each ring (outer, inner, etc.) rotates independently.

Add constant pass: Adds a byte constant (derived from year: 2025 & 0xFF = 225) to every cell modulo 256.

This operation uniformly shifts all byte values across the entire matrix, providing initial value diffusion. Subtract constant pass: Subtracts a byte constant (derived from month: 7) from every cell modulo 256.

This reverses some of the addition effect while maintaining byte-level confusion, creating a non-linear relationship between original and transformed values.

Investigate how the Seed is calculated with the information from the publickey.pubkey. What other data is used to calculate the seed?

OS{BENDER}