Euskal Encounter 33: Hack It
September 14, 2025 at 8:29 pm
As almost every year since the 14th edition, this year I assisted to the Euskal Encounter 33 with some friends.
For those who don't know what the Euskal Encounter is, in summary, Euskal Encounter is a computer party for computer amateurs and professionals seeking a knowledge exchange and willing to be involved for a few days in any kind of activity related to computers.
One of the activities is called HackIt / SolveIt. It is a contest where participants resolve a series of challenges or tests in hacking, inverse engineering, cryptography, logic, puzzles, etc.
The contest is divided into two modalities: Hack It for levels more proper to programming and inverse engineering, and Solve It, for levels of logic, puzzles and riddles.
In this entry, I'm going to talk about the Hack It modality, in particular, the two of six challenges our group passed (we are better at resolving Solve It challenges 😅).
Hack It 1: Easy and simple to understand
Classical first level of a hack it, a JavaScript code reversing. As we are quite lazy and we didn't want to waste time doing it, we asked Gemini and ChatGPT. Gemini failed (no surprise), but ChatGPT answered successfully.
Hint: Let's see if you can solve it.
The code (for those interested):
function c(p) {
const m = [];
p = p.toLowerCase();
for (let index = 0; index < p.length; index++) {
let x = p.charCodeAt(index);
if (x < 48 || x > 122 || (x > 57 && x < 97)) {
continue;
}
if ((m.length + 1) % 6 === 0) {
m.push(32);
}
if (x < 97) {
m.push(x);
continue;
}
x -= 97;
m.push((7 * x + 13) % 26 + 97);
}
let s = String.fromCharCode(...m).replace(/ /g, '');
if (s === 'jkhlnwwrarqznaidpqra') {
return true;
}
return false;
}
r = $("#password").val();
res = c(r);
$("#password").css({
"background-color": res ? "#8f8" : "#f88"
});
The answer: showaffinityandgetin.
Hack It 2: To be or not to be
Hint, that wasn't initially there: Arnold is wise, it's important to listen what he says.
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What the hell!? That's what we thought when we saw the level. Why so many YouTube links if this is some coding challenge?
At first sight, we can see there are a couple of videos, but each link goes after a certain timestamp of the video.
We go to the first one: a video of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies best lines. The other videos were similar.
As we didn't know what to do, we started removing the duplicated links. Then, we started listening to Arnold. We thought of getting the word of that precise second, but not always was Arnold saying something, so we started writing the entire line. That was a very good idea.
Using the AIs, I don't remember what of them said something about ArnoldC... Of course! A quick search and we went to the repository, and we started making the program with the lines.
Not all of them were really necessary, but it was important to do it right, following the order of the links listed in the level. After a couple of minutes trying to compile the code, we got a result: 42.
Really? We knew that wasn't really the answer of the level. But, as good geeks and nerds as we are, that 42 could only mean something about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
The answer (after they fixed the level): The answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
If someone wants to check the rest of the levels, you can go to this blog (it's is Spanish, sorry).
Till next time!