osint/literally arrakis II

154 solves / 320 points

Writeup by Victor

Similar to arrakis I, this challenge provides us with an image and tasks us with finding the corresponding latitude and longitude of the image from the appropriate street view.

We already know that the location is somewhere within a sand dune, but we need to find a unique object that sticks out. That object is the triangular shaped mound in the distance on the right. After using Google Lens to reverse image search the triangular mound, we find that the location of the image is in the Namibia Desert and the mound is called Dune 45.

After going through each individual street view image location and comparing it with the image provided in the challenge, we find this location:

The latitude and longitude coordinates of the image are -24.7287779, 15.4722992.

Unlike arrakis I, there didn't appear to be any tricks to solving this (no coordinates provided in a wikipedia page) which made this challenge particularly tedious as I ended up glossing over the correct street view location numerous times. However, with a bit of geometry and lining up the angles in the image, you are able to narrow the general location down to a few options.

Flag: UMDCTF{-24.7287779,15.4722992}