🕵️ Metadata Detective

Learn how investigators uncover hidden information stored inside files.

📸 Incident Briefing

A marketing employee uploaded a company photo to the website.

Management believes:

“It’s just a picture.”

Security investigators suspect otherwise.

Your job is to examine the file more closely.

🎯 Challenge

You receive a file:

company-photo.jpg

The following metadata is extracted:

Author: John Smith

Software: Adobe Photoshop

Comment:
flag{metadata_never_lies}

Can you find the flag?

🤔 Think Like An Investigator

Most users only view:

• Pictures
• Documents
• PDFs

Investigators examine:

• Metadata
• Properties
• Comments
• Creation Information

💡 Hints

Hint 1

Images often contain additional information.

Hint 2

Look beyond the visible picture.

Hint 3

The answer may already be inside the metadata.

🛠 Investigator Toolkit

• ExifTool
• strings
• file
• MediaInfo
• Windows Properties

ExifTool is one of the most valuable tools for metadata investigations.

🌎 Real-World Examples

Metadata has historically revealed:

• Employee Names
• Email Addresses
• Internal Server Names
• Document Authors
• GPS Coordinates

Organizations often forget metadata exists.

🔍 Investigation Result

The flag was hidden inside:

Comment:

Result:

flag{metadata_never_lies}

🏆 Key Lesson

Not all information is visible.

Metadata frequently contains valuable clues.

Investigators
Look Deeper

🔐 The Mystery Cipher

Learn how CTF players recognize common encodings and hidden messages hidden inside seemingly random text.