HackTheBox: Reversing Challenge, Baby RE

Hello

I started by downloading the file and I thought it is a regular file so I unzip it using the normal archive. The surprising thing is that the file is empty! which leads me to know that half of the challenge is unzipping the file. Let’s start

You have to install p7zip by typing “sudo apt-get install p7zip-full”

Figure 1 installing p7zip

After installing, I ran it against the file “7z e Baby_RE.zip”, e stands for extract. It will ask you about the password which is “hackthebox” as it is given in the description of the challenge.

Figure 2 extracting the file

As figure 2 shows, file has extracted successfully. and just to make sure, i listed the files to see it.

Figure 3 listing files

I opened the file using the cat command to see what it has, and this weired symbols appeared.

Figure 4 opening the file

so i tried to make it neater to be able to read it by typing “strings baby”

Figure 5 filter the file

It is written ‘insert key abcde122313’. Therefore, another challenge is on the way. I went to take a look in the Downloading folder, and I found that the file is an executable file.

Figure 6 the file in the downloads folder

So just for curiosity, I changed the mode of the file by “chmod +x” to be able to run it. After running it, it asked me to insert a key so I tried the key that appeared in Figure 5 and the flag appeared!