$ cat writeup.md…
$ cat writeup.md…
broncoctf2026
Task: Three Lost Judgment PNG screenshots hint at RGB channels and varying heat bars, with no useful metadata or appended data. Solution: Inspect the matching RGB bit planes, read three text masks, and concatenate them without spaces.
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Lost Judgment has been one of my favorite visuals in the Yakuza Series, especially the styles and their colors. As much as Fully Baked loves Boxer, I much prefer the RGB trifecta. But what's with the heat bar amount on each style? Are they trying to tell me something? format: bronco{}, if you find multiple parts, no spaces.
The provided files are Tiger.png, Snake.png, and Crane.png. The goal is to recover the data hidden in the screenshots and place the combined result inside bronco{...}.
The description gives three complementary clues:
The principal false assumption was to treat the visible gauge amounts as numbers and then convert those numbers into RGB values, color names, or characters. That produced many plausible-looking but incorrect results. The simplifying pivot was to inspect each channel's eight bit planes directly.
No metadata, unusual PNG chunks, alpha-channel payload, or trailing file data is required. The deliberate payload appears as clean text masks in these planes:
| File | Matching channel | Bit index (LSB = 0) | Text |
|---|---|---|---|
Tiger.png | Red | 0 | F33L |
Snake.png | Green | 2 | TH3 |
Crane.png | Blue | 4 | H34T |
...
$ grep --similar