Genotype

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In this walkthrough, we are going to solve a Misc challenge Genotype that was pretty easy to solve and was one of the most solved challenges.

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Objective: Learn various ways of identifying ciphers and decoding them using online tools.

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Shall we?

1. The challenge description was very vivid, hackers have some good genes.
2. Proceed to search for DNA ciphers.
   
3. Reading the article by geeksforgeeks.org, it is evident that data and information can be hidden within DNA Sequence.
4. Head over to google and search for DNA cipher decoder and you should find variety of tools to perform this.
   
5. But wait, that does not look like a flag.
6. Yes, yes yes…that is no flag. I therefore introduce you to Dcodefr, a tool that will automatically detect what kind of cipher a string is encoded with.
   
7. dcode.fr identifies the cipher as Codons (Genetic Code) with a very high probability.
8. Lets now proceede and decode the cipher.
   
9. And there we get our hidden message YOUHAVEGOTSOMEWEIRDGENETICSHACKER.

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Takeaways There are various ways on encoding information. Don’t mistake encoding for encryption. Encoding hides data for compatibility or obfuscation, while encryption protects it with cryptographic strength.