cyrptogram

Here is another CTF problem from last years Army Cyber Stakes Challenge.  You are provided a solid line of characters (see below) and have to turn it into the flag.  The trick is that because there aren’t any line breaks, you have to figure it out.

 _                     _                                 __ _                 ____ _______  _____  _   _ | |__   ___ _ __ ___  (_)___   _   _  ___  _   _ _ __   / _| | __ _  __ _ _  | __ )_   _\ \/ / _ \| \ | || '_ \ / _ \ '__/ _ \ | / __| | | | |/ _ \| | | | '__| | |_| |/ _` |/ _` (_) |  _ \ | |  \  / | | |  \| || | | |  __/ | |  __/ | \__ \ | |_| | (_) | |_| | |    |  _| | (_| | (_| |_  | |_) || |  /  \ |_| | |\  ||_| |_|\___|_|  \___| |_|___/  \__, |\___/ \__,_|_|    |_| |_|\__,_|\__, (_) |____/ |_| /_/\_\___/|_| \_|                               |___/                                |___/

There isn’t a ton of skill required for this one.  When I paste the entire thing into Notepad ++ (turn off the line wrap), I see a bunch of underscore characters to start with that I take to be the flat tops of other letters.  So I went ahead and put a return where I saw the first non-flat character (position 106).  When I do that, it drops the rest down, and it looks close, but not totally right so I took it back one space to 105.  From there, just keep dropping the line down at each the same spot until you get….

 _                     _                                 __ _                 ____ _______  _____  _   _ 
| |__   ___ _ __ ___  (_)___   _   _  ___  _   _ _ __   / _| | __ _  __ _ _  | __ )_   _\ \/ / _ \| \ | |
| '_ \ / _ \ '__/ _ \ | / __| | | | |/ _ \| | | | '__| | |_| |/ _` |/ _` (_) |  _ \ | |  \  / | | |  \| |
| | | |  __/ | |  __/ | \__ \ | |_| | (_) | |_| | |    |  _| | (_| | (_| |_  | |_) || |  /  \ |_| | |\  |
|_| |_|\___|_|  \___| |_|___/  \__, |\___/ \__,_|_|    |_| |_|\__,_|\__, (_) |____/ |_| /_/\_\___/|_| \_|
                               |___/                                |___/

 

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