So Meta

• Description: Find the flag in this picture.
• Difficulty: Medium

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🔎 Solution

The challenge provides an image file. By examining its metadata, we find that the flag is hidden in the image's Artist field.

└─$ exiftool pico_img.png 
ExifTool Version Number         : 13.00
File Name                       : pico_img.png
Directory                       : .
File Size                       : 109 kB
File Modification Date/Time     : 2025:08:27 12:44:28-04:00
File Access Date/Time           : 2025:08:27 12:45:00-04:00
File Inode Change Date/Time     : 2025:08:27 12:45:00-04:00
File Permissions                : -rw-------
File Type                       : PNG
File Type Extension             : png
MIME Type                       : image/png
Image Width                     : 600
Image Height                    : 600
Bit Depth                       : 8
Color Type                      : RGB
Compression                     : Deflate/Inflate
Filter                          : Adaptive
Interlace                       : Noninterlaced
Software                        : Adobe ImageReady
XMP Toolkit                     : Adobe XMP Core 5.3-c011 66.145661, 2012/02/06-14:56:27
Creator Tool                    : Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)
Instance ID                     : xmp.iid:A5566E73B2B811E8BC7F9A4303DF1F9B
Document ID                     : xmp.did:A5566E74B2B811E8BC7F9A4303DF1F9B
Derived From Instance ID        : xmp.iid:A5566E71B2B811E8BC7F9A4303DF1F9B
Derived From Document ID        : xmp.did:A5566E72B2B811E8BC7F9A4303DF1F9B
Warning                         : [minor] Text/EXIF chunk(s) found after PNG IDAT (may be ignored by some readers)
Artist                          : picoCTF{s0_m3ta_eb36bf44}
Image Size                      : 600x600
Megapixels                      : 0.360

🚩Flag

picoCTF{s0_m3ta_eb36bf44}