FORENSICS · EASY

Metadata Trail

100 points • EXIF / File Forensics

Case Brief

A whistleblower uploaded a photo to a public forum before going dark. The image itself is unremarkable — but intelligence suggests the photographer accidentally left identifying information embedded directly in the file.

Digital images often carry more data than meets the eye. Camera make, model, GPS coordinates, timestamps, and custom text fields are all stored inside the file alongside the pixel data. Investigators call this EXIF metadata. Your job is to extract it.

📎 Evidence File

🖼️
CLASSIFIED
evidence.jpg
⬇  Download evidence.jpg

JPEG image • contains embedded EXIF metadata

Objective

Examine the EXIF metadata embedded in evidence.jpg and find the flag hidden in one of the fields. The flag follows the format flag{...}.

Recommended: exiftool evidence.jpg (install via brew install exiftool or sudo apt install libimage-exiftool-perl).
Alternatively, any online EXIF viewer works.