OSINT - Bob L'éponge

OSINT Challenge: Bob L'éponge

In this writeup, we’ll walk through solving an OSINT challenge involving a YouTube video link. The task was to find a hidden flag without any obvious clues in the video or its description.

Analyzing the YouTube Video

The first step was to check the YouTube video link provided in the challenge. I looked into the following aspects:

• Video Description: No flag or useful information found.

• Comments: There were no hints or flags present in the comments.

• Uploader’s Profile: I checked the profile of the uploader, including the bio, but didn’t find anything useful.

Checking the Playlists

Noticing that the uploader had some public playlists, I decided to investigate them:

• I checked each video in the playlists, but there were no visible flags or links.

• This made me suspect that the flag could be hidden in a less obvious place, which is common in OSINT challenges.

Extracting YouTube Metadata

Since the flag wasn’t visible in the video content, description, or playlists, I turned to YouTube metadata analysis. I used the following website for this:

YouTube Metadata Tool

This tool allows you to extract hidden metadata from YouTube videos, including tags, which are often used by creators but are not visible directly on the YouTube platform.

Finding the Hidden Flag

After inputting the YouTube video link into the metadata tool, I reviewed the extracted metadata. Among the various tags, I found the hidden flag: