Following the Authentic Chinese Food challenge, I stumbled upon another OSINT challenge called “Plane Spotting” from CSAW CTF 2024. The challenge description is as follows:
Quote
My friend swears he saw a Russian plane in the US this June, but I don’t believe him. He also says he saw it was parked next to a plane owned by an infamous former president!
Can you find the registration number of this Russian plane, the FAA airport code of where the plane was spotted parked next to the other, as well as the registration number of the plane owned by that president?
My friend also tells me that a few days earlier, ANOTHER Russian plane flew to the US. Find the city that Russian plane was closest to at 21:07:40 Z during its flight to the US!
Flag format: csawctf{RegistrationNumberRUS_AirportCode_RegistrationNumberUS_CityName}
Do not include any special characters (dashes, etc)
author: lpv2013
A Russian plane in the US and parked next to a plane owned by an infamous former president? This must be a famous and appeared in the news. I will start by searching for news articles related to Russian planes in the US in June.
This is the prompt I used to search for it:
Russian planes in the US in June park next to former president plane
I found this footage from YouTube. Fortunately, the video quality is great and I can see the registration number of the Russian plane. The registration number is RA-96018 and Trump’s plane is N757AF.
They all parked at IAD airport.
The last part of the challenge is the hardest. I need to find the city that the Russian plane was closest to at 21:07:40 Z during its flight to the US. Convert the time to EDT, 21:07:40 Z is 17:07:40 EDT.
This article from AirLive has the information I need. The flight was RSD738 heading from JFK to IAD, however I need to track down the flight path to find the city closest to the plane at that time.
The map of the flight itself does not display city names, therefore I have to use Google Maps to compare the flight path. Luckily, the flight at that time was near a river with a specific shape.
The city closest to the plane at that time is Trenton, New Jersey.
Combine everything we got:
csawctf{RA96018_IAD_N757AF_Trenton}