The Seint's Christmas CTF — Part 5

We’ve been to Brno, Paris, and London, I wonder where we’re off to next? Let’s find out:

The next message arrived 10 days later and it surprised me: "I'm both in Sweden and in the USA right now. How is it possible? Well, there's a town with that name in the north of the US. It has a nice website, but fifteen years ago this town and website looked a little different. On the main page there was a picture of a building I am standing in front of right now. There's someone in a car parked right here, talking on the phone and another car with some strange gear just passed by. Can you tell the parked car's make and model?"

The make and model of the parked car mentioned in the message (in the pattern: xxxxxxxx xxx), turned to lowercase and into a hash, is the password to the next step.

PS: If you want to go back to the beginning of this walkthrough, you can find it here. Spoilers ahead!

Once again, I ended up on a little tangent on this clue, partly due to the number of Swedish communities there are in North America. I started off with Sweden in Maine, but the key in the clue is how the town’s website looked fifteen years ago. Unfortunately, the website for Sweden in Maine looks like it only got going a few years ago:

So it was back to Google Maps until I found another Sweden, this time in Monroe County, New York state. And here’s how the website looked fifteen years ago (i.e., August 2007 from the perspective of The Seint’s friend):

And here’s how that same Town Hall looks on Google Street View today, complete with someone talking on their phone in a car outside:

Now, I am absolutely terrible at identifying cars, but even I can read the brand off the back, which I could do by walking around a little:

The clue also tells me that the car model has only three characters in it. Wikipedia was then a big help, or whichever contributor decided that it would be great for posterity if there was an illustrated list of Infiniti vehicles! Most vehicles in this list are shown from a front quarter view, so I had to have another little trek around the vehicle. Finally I found one whose front grille and headlights vaguely matched the car in Sweden:

While they’re not an exact match, the G35 was manufactured for over 20 years, so there will have been variations in the design over that time. And of course, G35 is three characters, so definitely worth a shot! Sure enough, it was the right vehicle, and we’re off to Step 6!

Takeaway

There is a wealth of seemingly useless information on Wikipedia that turns out to be extremely helpful from time to time. Worth bearing in mind the next time you get a fundraising email from Jimmy Wales! (Likewise, the Wayback Machine is supported by voluntary donations.) I’m strongly of the opinion that if you benefit from a tool, then you should try and help support it.

Header photo by Lukas Žvikas at Pexels