OSINTHidden Investigations CTF 2026
Shadow Identity
Identify a person from a pageant poster photo. Poster text reads 'Miss Grand Tanzania 2026'; web research and spelling variants lead to the full name.
What this one teaches
- Reading all text visible in an image before reverse-searching — the poster itself names the pageant and year.
- Trying multiple spelling variants from different news outlets when the first submission is rejected.
Task description
During an intelligence operation, our team recovered a single photograph from a suspect’s device. We believe this individual holds a key piece of information. Your mission: identify the person in the photograph.
Submit the person’s full name as the flag. All characters of the flag is in lowercase.
Challenge
A single photograph was recovered from a suspect’s device. Task: identify the person and submit their full name (lowercase) as the flag.
Approach
Metadata inspection
No EXIF, GPS, author, or embedded-name data — the answer is purely in the image content.
Visual OSINT
The poster text reads “MISS GRAND TANZANIA 2026”, next to the Tanzanian flag and Mount Kilimanjaro. The filename miss_grand.jpeg confirms the Miss Grand pageant context. So the subject is the titleholder of Miss Grand Tanzania 2026.
Identification via web research
Searching “Miss Grand Tanzania 2026 winner” identifies Jihan Dimack (representing Mwanza), crowned Miss Grand Tanzania 2026 on 8 Aug 2026. She went on to win Miss Grand International 2026 in Bangkok (10 Oct 2026) — Africa’s/Tanzania’s first MGI winner. Her name appears in several spellings across outlets:
- Jihan Dimack
- Jihan Mohin Dimachk (ibtimes / gmanetwork)
- Jihan Mohin Dimack
Flag determination
Submitted name variants against the CTF API:
| Attempt | Result |
|---|---|
jihan_dimack |
badFlag |
jihan_mohin_dimachk |
badFlag |
jihan_mohamed_dimack |
badFlag |
jihan_mohin_dimack |
goodFlag |
The flagReveal
hiCTF{jihan_mohin_dimack}This CTF was possibly solved, and the writeup most likely written by an LLM. Apologies for inconsistencies.