Encoding Meta

Data and You

Humans talk to humans. Humans talk to computers. Humans talk to humans through computers. Computers talk to humans. Computers talk to computers. Each of those use cases can look very very different, because the considerations for how each party to that conversations wants to pass data can be very different. Security of that data, along with confirming the integrity of it, is basically the core of communication, going back as far as possible.

Previously humans were limited by the noises we could make with our bodies, the hand signals we could make, or even the letters we could write. Unfortunately, computers had to come and ruin everything by making infinite languages, and all the different ways we can convey information is impossible to get a grasp on, for the rest of time. This makes funky (and not so funky) ways to represent information a core part of nearly all CTF challenges.

But fear not, we can at least try to learn the important ways we pass information around these days and go from there... And hopefully we can still appreciate the benefits that computers have provided us in regards to communication, in addition to how much harder they have made CTF challenges. Every single CTF challenge is an encoding problem at its core.

Encoding vs Encryption vs Hashing vs Obfuscation

This is an important read to get the basic ideas of how we modify information, and how it relates to security.

https://danielmiessler.com/study/encoding-encryption-hashing-obfuscation/