Puzzle #7: Ann’s Dark Tangent (DEFCON 2010)

At long last! Here is a copy of Puzzle #7, “Ann’s Dark Tangent,” which was run at Defcon 18 (2010). This contest was unusual in that the answer was a single word. The contest was open to DEFCON 18 attendees who were at the conference. Although the contest has long since closed, you might enjoy playing around with the packet capture, which contains wireless iPad traffic.

Ann has arranged a rendezvous with Dark Tangent. You are the forensic investigator. Can you figure out their destination?

Here’s a copy of their network traffic:

evidence-defcon2010.pcap
MD5sum: 7c416421a626600f86e3702df0cac8ef

The first team to submit the correct answer wins a brand new Apple iPad.

A few notes:
1. You will not get the correct answer simply by running “strings” on the packet capture. It is more complicated than that.
2. Please do not attempt to brute-force the answer by guessing. We reserve the right to cut you off from submitting answers if you abuse the privilege.

Have fun! 🙂

Puzzle #7 was written by Sherri Davidoff, Eric Fulton and Jonathan Ham.

Copyright 2010, Lake Missoula Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

2 Comments

  1. The file evidence-defcon2010.pcap seems broken. Its md5 sum is
    6f2838fd64f5341e2565c61b36382608
    Thus the puzzle cann’t continues.
    Could you please re-check it and upload a correct one? Thanks.

  2. sherri

    August 24, 2011 at 1:47 am

    Fixed! Good catch, thanks for letting us know.

    – Sherri

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