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like1000

  • Description: This .tar file got tarred a lot.
  • Difficulty: Medium

🔎 Solution​

When extracting the provided file 1000.tar, it yields 999.tar, and extracting that in turn produces 998.tar. It appears that in this challenge, we must unpack all the nested archives to obtain the flag.

> tar -xvf 1000.tar                                    
999.tar
filler.txt
                                                                                        
> tar -xvf 999.tar
998.tar
filler.txt

To automate this process, I wrote a Python script that sequentially extracts each file

import tarfile  
for i in range(1000, 0, -1):  
        filename = str(i) + '.tar'  
        tar = tarfile.open(filename)  
        tar.extractall() 
        tar.close()

After running the script, all files are fully unpacked, revealing the final file flag.png.

🚩Flag​

picoCTF{l0t5_0f_TAR5}