Here’s one way to solve the Brucon WiFi Puzzle: open the capture file with Wireshark.
The capture file contains one beacon frame for the brucon09wifi network. If you’re a bit familiar with beacon frames, one tag will stand out: the vendor specific tag which Wireshark can’t interpret because it’s from a vendor it doesn’t know.
The hidden data is inside the vendor specific tag. Select it and export the selected bytes:
How do you decode this data? You can try all types of encoding and encryption schemes, but to prevent you from wasting time trying countless possibilities, I’ve given you a hint in the name of the vendor: XortecOy. The data is XOR-encrypted. And the key is tecOy. 😉
Open the saved bytes with Cryptool:
And apply XOR-decryption with key tecOy:
Et voilà !
Didier Stevens 