Forensics on Adamino CTF Writeups

ImageMagick

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 15:30:00 +0100

ImageMagick: Command-Line Image Surgery

ImageMagick is a scriptable image-manipulation toolkit — think Photoshop operations you can run from the terminal and loop over. In CTFs it earns its keep for the unglamorous but constant tasks: stitching image fragments back together, cropping a region out of a larger picture, converting formats, and flattening layers. No GUI, no clicking, fully reproducible.

binwalk

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 15:15:00 +0100

binwalk: Finding What’s Hidden Inside a File

Files lie about where they end. A JPEG can have a ZIP archive glued to its tail, a firmware image is really a dozen filesystems stacked back-to-back, and a “picture” might be three files in a trenchcoat. binwalk scans a file for the signatures of other file formats embedded anywhere inside it, then extracts them. It’s the go-to tool for firmware analysis and for the classic “there’s more to this file than meets the eye” forensics/OSINT puzzle.

ExifTool

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 15:00:00 +0100

ExifTool: Squeezing Metadata Out of Files

Every photo, PDF, and document carries a surprising amount of hidden metadata — camera model, software, timestamps, edit history, and, most usefully for OSINT, GPS coordinates. ExifTool by Phil Harvey is the definitive tool for reading (and writing) this metadata across essentially every file format that has any. In an OSINT or forensics challenge it’s usually the very first command you run, because the answer is often sitting in a tag the challenge author forgot to strip.

tshark & Wireshark

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 14:45:00 +0100

tshark & Wireshark: Reading Packet Captures

When a forensics challenge hands you a .pcap or .pcapng, Wireshark and its command-line sibling tshark are how you turn a wall of packets into an answer. Wireshark’s GUI is unbeatable for exploring an unfamiliar capture; tshark is unbeatable for extracting exactly the fields you need into a form you can script against. You’ll use both — GUI to find the needle, tshark to pull it out in bulk.

Rubik's Cube

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 21:34:01 +0200

Challenge Name: forensics_rubiks-cube

Category: Forensics

Difficulty: Medium

Author: Vincent

Challenge Description

Our coworker just got a new Rubik’s Cube and it is driving everyone in the office crazy. But more importantly, it is decreasing their productivity and thereby shareholder value.