Video and Audio file analysis

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Audio and video file manipulation is a staple in CTF forensics challenges, leveraging steganography and metadata analysis to hide or reveal secret messages. Tools such as mediainfo and exiftool are essential for inspecting file metadata and identifying content types.

For audio challenges, Audacity stands out as a premier tool for viewing waveforms and analyzing spectrograms, essential for uncovering text encoded in audio. Sonic Visualiser is highly recommended for detailed spectrogram analysis. Audacity allows for audio manipulation like slowing down or reversing tracks to detect hidden messages. Sox, a command-line utility, excels in converting and editing audio files.

Least Significant Bits (LSB) manipulation is a common technique in audio and video steganography, exploiting the fixed-size chunks of media files to embed data discreetly. Multimon-ng is useful for decoding messages hidden as DTMF tones or Morse code.

Video challenges often involve container formats that bundle audio and video streams. FFmpeg is the go-to for analyzing and manipulating these formats, capable of de-multiplexing and playing back content. For developers, ffmpy integrates FFmpeg's capabilities into Python for advanced scriptable interactions.

This array of tools underscores the versatility required in CTF challenges, where participants must employ a broad spectrum of analysis and manipulation techniques to uncover hidden data within audio and video files.

References

• https://trailofbits.github.io/ctf/forensics/

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