This challenge had us look at 2 Portable Network Graphic (PNG) files that were mangled and half-destroyed. See below:

challenge combine

Solution

In our terminal of choice, using the following command:

strings challenge.png

We can see in the output that the challengers offered a hint: Have you heard of stegsolve? My answer: nope.

A quick search for stegsolve leads me to this GitHub repo containing a stegsolve tool.

We install the stegsolver tool on my virtual machine and ran the imagine combiner tool under the analyse tab to retrieve the flag:

magpieCTF{H0p3fully_U_D1dnt_Brut3_f0rc3_1t}