CTF-Writeups

OSINT / Scouts Honor 2.0 — Writeup

Flag format:

RUSEC{ISSN-1234-5678_NAME-OF-NEWSPAPER}

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Part 1 — Identify the magazine + ISSN

Clues

• “historic civic organization”
• a childhood magazine
• a favorite issue containing references to:
  • the Olympics
  • a funny “mail burro” who loves alfalfa
  • a “Cheetah Hunt”

Reasoning

A historic civic organization strongly suggests the Boy Scouts of America (BSA).
The BSA’s long-running youth magazine is Boys’ Life (renamed to Scout Life in 2021), and an important OSINT detail is that an ISSN identifies the serial title, not a single issue—so once you correctly identify the magazine, the ISSN is the same across its issues.

How to confirm (reproducible)

You can confirm the ISSN in several OSINT-friendly ways:

1. Library/catalog lookups (fastest)
   • Search WorldCat / Library of Congress / national library catalogs for:
     • Boys' Life ISSN
2. Masthead verification (most “CTF flavored”)
   • Find a scan/PDF of the magazine and open the masthead/publication info page.
   • The ISSN is typically printed near the publisher and subscription details.

Result

• Magazine: Boys’ Life
• ISSN: 0006-8608

So the first part is:

ISSN-0006-8608

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Part 2 — Identify the WWI-era newspaper

Clues

• “very old newspaper”
• published during World War I
• from one of the three Rutgers campus locations
  • New Brunswick
  • Newark
  • Camden
• mentions a historic boy-led organization (again pointing to the Boy Scouts)
• mentions a General McAlpin, described as President of the organization

OSINT approach (reproducible)

This is a text-search/archival problem; the easiest workflow is:

1. Anchor on the rare name + role
   • Search phrases like:
     • McAlpin "President" "Boy Scouts"
     • "General McAlpin" "Boy Scouts" president
2. Restrict to WWI years
   • Apply date filters (1914–1918) in the archive/search engine.
3. Restrict to Rutgers campus towns
   • Filter results to New Brunswick, Newark, or Camden newspapers.

Useful places to search:

• Library/State newspaper portals
• Chronicling America / local historical newspaper collections
• University library digitized newspaper archives

Result

The WWI-era paper containing the “General McAlpin … President” mention was:

The Voice of Labor

For flag formatting, use hyphens instead of spaces:

THE-VOICE-OF-LABOR

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Final flag

Combine both parts:

RUSEC{ISSN-0006-8608_THE-VOICE-OF-LABOR}