These writeups are for the OSINT challenges I solved while competing in DamCTF 2024 with my team, Bonzi_Brigade. This event took place from 06th April - 08th April. Our team scored 1380 points in total and came 27th out of 207 teams.

asparagus?

Authors:

alienfoetus, WholeWheatBagels

Solves:

44

Description:

Last spring break, we took a short trip to see these special flowers! Can you find where we were?

Challenge image:

Since the framing of the challenge is the Oregon State University students going on a trip for spring break, I assumed that they would still be in Oregon. I started off by searching for wild purple flowers in Oregon. The ones shown in the screenshot below look to be similar to those found in the provided picture:

Opening the site this image is from, we see that it is identified as “common camas”.

Now that I knew the name of the flower, I searched for where they might be found in Oregon:

The Portland Nursery article links to the Oregon Camassia Natural Area:

The website for the Oregon Camassia Natural Area has a map showing the location:

Looking at the Camassia Nature Area on Google maps we see I-205 is beside it. This could be the road that is behind the individual in the photo.

We can find a familiar view by dropping down into street view on the road:

This picture was likely to be taken here giving a high degree of confidence that this is the location in the provided picture; the Camassia Natural Area.

Flag:

dam{camassia-natural-area}

grapes??

Authors:

alienfoetus, WholeWheatBagels

Solves:

13

Description:

My dad had a friend take a picture of his speeder car, but we forgot where this was. Can you find the name of the vineyard in the background?

Hints:

Hint 1: Pay more attention to the environment rather than the speeder cars themselves.

Hint 2: You're looking for a specific vineyard, not the winery that owns it.

Challenge image:

This photo was provided to the orangisers by Adam Weidenbach and used with permission during this CTF.

Adam Weidenbach is based out of California so it’s likely the photo is from this part of the world.

Putting the image into Google images, Google Lens focuses on the first train car. We can click on the result for the City of Douglas and it takes us to a document giving some history on trains, including these motor cars.

We see that they are called motor cars in this document:

Searching for “california vineyard with motorcar track” we see this image for the Pacific Railcar Operators (PRO) group.

On this site we see the members standing with a Napa Valley sign. This sign lets us know that it is a “wine growing region”. It could be possible that they visited the area and Adam joined them.

A list of the wineries along the track is available on the website. There is a left bend in the track at the very start of the provided picture. This got me to look around number 26 (Far Niente) as the track is seen to bend left before going straight alongside the road. I decided to check this area on Google Maps.

Following the track in this area in Google Maps, we see this part that bends to the left, this is shown in the image below. It also has tree cover on either side. Dropping into street view to check this out we can only get a view from further up the track.

This has to be it: Google Maps street view

Comparing the features seen from the spot we are in, we can see that they are very similar:

1 = dip down to smaller hill
2 = distant trees seen in the gap can be seen in the provided picture
3 = Hill in the foreground on the right with larger hill behind

To get more information on the vineyard, I looked for who owned the land. Reading this article pointed out that the sign was on the land of the Robert Mondavi Winery. Searching for the properties of Robert Mondavi Winery, we see there are 3 vineyards.

Looking for more information on these, I started searching for maps of the vineyards and came across this map of To Kalon:

Visting the webiste, we see that the field that is in the photo is To-Kalon vineyard giving us our flag.

Flag:

dam{to-kalon-vineyard}

Note: The OSU Security Club GitLab repo for this challenge contains the flag flag{martin-stelling-vineyard}. This extension of To Kalon is shown on the GuildSomm site provided above and would have been the next guess if the flag provided was not accepted.