Introduction

This challenge is an OSINT challenge from the PWNME CTF.

Context explanation

To understand the context of the challenge, look at the description of the introduction challenge.

Directive

John loves adventure and travel. Can you give me the 3 cities he visited during his trip to Europe?

Flag format

PWNME{city1_city2_city3} Cities in lowercase and in alphabetical order, separated by an “_”.

Solution

On John Droper’s GitHub, droperkingjohn, on one of his commits, we can see that he removed part of his index.html.

<body>
	<h1>John Droper's website</h1>
	<p>I will edit my curriculum later but this is some information about me:</p> <br>
	<p>- I could be pro with my team, but you know... (cruciate ligament rupture...) => https://www.tgb-basket.com/<br>- If you've already met me, you know that I love traveling; this is one of my new favorite forums (I'm not really active, but recently I shared information about my trip to Europe) =>  https://www.forum-train.com/forum/index.php</p>

	<hr style = "border:none;margin-bottom:20%">
	<p class="semiSecret">You can contact me :<br>johndroperdroperjohn@gmail.com<br>(links are not up for the moment, sorry...)</p>
	<div class="logosRS">
		<img src="./twitter.png" sizes="30px"/>
		<img src="./facebook.png"/>
		<img src="./instagram.png"/>
    <!-- No copyright but => https://github.com/droperkingjohn -->
	</div>
</body>
</html>

That diff leaks a lot:

• an email: johndroperdroperjohn@gmail.com
• a forum he posts on: https://www.forum-train.com/forum/index.php
• the networks he’s on: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
• a basketball site: https://www.tgb-basket.com/

Searching his two handles, jdthetraveller and droperkingjohn, on Twitter and Instagram found two profiles:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/droperkingjohn

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/droperkingjohn/

After finding the social media accounts mentioned on John’s blog, I tried to find others by searching for his pseudonyms on Google and Bing.

First city: Kaunas

We find a link to a thread on the jeuxvideo.com forum where John posted a message.

The jeuxvideo.com post

Hi all,
I'm totally new to the site and a friend told me about the fact that you could help me,
I have to find another friend but he sent me 3 too weird messages the first was "investor",
the second "utopian" and the third "ligamentous".
I know it is mysterious but here I am completely lost.
I think losing that friend will be easier than solving the investigation.

If we search for the three words in French investisseur, utopique, and ligamenteux on https://what3words.com/, we find Kaunas in Lithuania.

The location with what3words

So we have the first city visited by John Droper: Kaunas.

Second city: Gols

One of John’s Instagram posts shows a euro banknote with its serial number in frame.

The serial is U50441715662, and the caption makes clear he’s into bill tracking, chasing this particular note.

That points at https://www.eurobilltracker.com/.

John on EuroBillTracker

His handle jdthetraveller has an account there, registered in Gols, Austria. It’s definitely him, the profile description links his blog.

So we have the second city visited by John Droper: Gols.

Third city:

Back to that GitHub leak: John mentioned an account on https://www.forum-train.com/forum/index.php.

John on forum-train

The Google dork site:forum-train.com jdthetraveller finds his intro post on the forum.

This post tells us that John left Bratislava by train after traveling by car and that the train journey lasted exactly 10h58.

Hello everyone,

Let me introduce myself, John D.,
I've been a fan of travel for a very long time!
I recently took a trip to Europe and part of that trip was by train.
After going to Central Europe I decided to go to Eastern Europe.
I left Bratislava and traveled for 10h58 it was really very long... 

If you have any tips for discovering places in the United States, I'll be there soon

Further down, in another message, John says he didn’t have time to visit Bratislava, which allows us to confirm that Bratislava is not one of the cities visited by John.

I forgot to mention that I didn't even have time to visit Bratislava unlike the other cities of my trip to Europe...

Otherwise, first of all thank you for the welcome!

I'm going to try to visit all the coolest corners of the United States so I'll take all the advice!

The train journey

So: a 10h58 train out of Bratislava, heading into Eastern Europe. https://direkt.bahn.guru/ maps travel times from a station.

Setting the origin to Bratislava hl.st., the map puts Terespol at exactly 10h58 away.

Terespol matches the time and sits in Eastern Europe, lining up with his post.

So we have the third city visited by John Droper: Terespol.

The flag

The three cities visited by John Droper are:

• Kaunas in Lithuania
• Gols in Austria
• Terespol in Poland

As a reminder, the flag format is PWNME{city1_city2_city3} Cities in lowercase and in alphabetical order, separated by an “_”.

The flag is therefore: PWNME{gols_kaunas_terespol}

Tips & Tricks

• Google dork: site:forum-train.com jdthetraveller
• Try searching with other search engines like Bing, DuckDuckGo, Qwant, or Yandex.
• A location can be specified using GPS coordinates, address, postal code, city name, country name, etc. However, it is also possible to divide the globe into 3m² squares and specify a location using three words. This is the concept of what3words.
• To track Euro bills, you can use the website https://www.eurobilltracker.com/.
• All train departures/arrivals in Europe can be found on the website https://direkt.bahn.guru/.