Hello,
Time for another walkthrough from over on Hacktoria, I will get to the more harder ones I just wont to do it in the Easy > Medium > Hard > Insane order.
So here we go.
Prisoner of War
Greetings Special Agent K. We have an urgent contract for the government of France. After their official departure from Mali during August 2022, only a few platoons of Special Operation Units remain in the country. Officially, these troops are not present. Unofficially, they are there to protect high ranking politicians and other French partisans.Two days ago, during a routine escort of a Malian VIP, the convoy was ambushed by unknown insurgent forces. The VIP and most of the convoy managed to return fire and make it out alive. One of the soldiers however, Raphaël Bernard, was hit in the right leg and taken prisoner by the insurgents.
Not being able to reach private Bernard before being captured, French forces were ordered to stand down and not give chase.
Continuing efforts of the French government to locate the missing private have yielded no results. Up until this morning, when a young girl approached a local police unit. She conveyed to them she had escaped a childrens home where she was kept against her will. The man who helped her escape, gave her a picture of the place they were being held. We have reason to believe this man is the missing private, Raphaël Bernard.
The girl approached the officers on the RN1 near “Posté de contrôle KAYES”. Below you find the image given to the girl, as well as the AOR (Area of Operation) of the remaining French detachement.
It’s your job to locate the building where the French private is being held. Once the location is confirmed, French special forces will conduct a raid to extract Raphaël Bernard.
As always, Special Agent K. The contract is yours, if you choose to accept.
Construct the password for the flagfile using the full name of the location, as listed on Google Maps.
Example password: habitat-d-azure-hotel-champagne
Location of the ambush, marked with yellow: 14.495703,-11.156166,17
Right, lets start by extracting the information from the detail given above.
- Government of France.
- Departure from Mali.
- Raphaël Bernard taken hostage.
- Young girl approached a local police unit.
- She had escaped a children’s home.
- The man who helped her escape, gave her a picture of the place they were being held.
- Man believed to be Raphaël Bernard.
- The girl approached the officers on the RN1.
- Near “Posté de contrôle KAYES”.
Ok, so a young girl escaped a children’s home where she was being kept against her will, a young girls is not walking far, she approached the officers om the RN1 so lets look for children’s homes near “Posté de contrôle KAYES”.
After searching ‘Posté de contrôle Kayes children’s home Mali’, Posté de contrôle Kayes children’s hospital Mali’, Posté de contrôle Kayes children’s School Mali’, Posté de contrôle Kayes children Mali’, Posté de contrôle Kayes school Mali’ i still had no joy.
Next I took a different approach and googled “Which language do they speak in Mali” and found out it is French so used google translate English to French for “Children”.
Lets try some new searches starting with ‘Postes de contrôle Kayes enfants Mali’ but still no joy, lets google maps the area we got for a look, here is what we see.
Right place, on a whim I thought lets add enfants to the end and see what we get and BOOM.
Going by the Example password: habitat-d-azure-hotel-champagne we can try and open the file.
After about 3 attempts I got to the password village-d-enfants-sos-khouloum-kayes
So there we have it, another walkthrough and I am positive loads would have done in quicker than me but it is the journey and not the destination.
Regards
Alex