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My friend sent me an image of this beautiful canyon and asked me to work out where he is. More specifically, his latitude and longitude.

The only issue is that he's in Europe and this photo is of the Grand Canyon!

Can you help me find out where he is?

canyon.jpg

(It's fictional -- no friend involved. Just a backstory.)

Hint 1

Check the tags!

Hint 2

Half the clue is in one place, half the clue is in another.

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    $\begingroup$ He's in Europe. Obviously! $\endgroup$
    – Rubio ♦
    Aug 12, 2019 at 2:50
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    $\begingroup$ @Rubio Not quite what I mean... 😂😂 $\endgroup$
    – David Wheatley
    Aug 12, 2019 at 2:51
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    $\begingroup$ @RewanDemontay Nope. Check the tags! $\endgroup$
    – David Wheatley
    Aug 12, 2019 at 5:04

1 Answer 1

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I like steganography:

In image (edit image as text) is link to https://pastebin.com/uZzKFKhN
That has base64 text and decoding it gives https://gist.github.com/davwheat/
Which I'm not sure where to go next, but - that user seems to be from UK? (I could try to measure degrees in that image, but it feels like long shot) (there is also "022121001695" and "Murray Foubister" in image, but I guess that is some random information)

Some additional info:

There is "DYzMmM1NjZkYzQ1M2U1MjA0YWE4MDcxZmFjODk5MmE=" in comment of picture, but it is not correct Base64.
With joining with first Base64 code (or concatenation) it leads to https://gist.github.com/davwheat/4632c566dc453e5204aa8071fac8992a
In the name of file is another Base64 code "M3dvcmRz==" that gives "3words" that looks like it should be applied to text "///tiaqsf.rapiotgs.gpchdlr".
But that could be used in: https://what3words.com/ where those three words would be used something like https://what3words.com/tiaqsf.rapiotgs.gpchdlr

And:

With vigenere key "canyon" it gives us location https://what3words.com/rinses.packages.trouble which looks like airport in Denmark.

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    $\begingroup$ Murray Foubister appears to be the original photographer, he has a Flickr account with a lot of nature photography and a lot of the south rim photos on Wikimedia commons are credited to him :) $\endgroup$
    – JProblems
    Aug 12, 2019 at 18:06
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    $\begingroup$ @JanIvan You're getting quite close. Murray is just the original capturer and has no relation to the question. You're missing part of the URL. The second half is located elsewhere. $\endgroup$
    – David Wheatley
    Aug 12, 2019 at 20:36
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    $\begingroup$ @DavidWheatley Well I think I'm still missing something, problem is that picture is exacly same as on wiki, except some "text" inside. I found plenty of stuff, but I don't see any that I should use. Like: 0D85AB2F1400C1EE53FF419BE361802E, W5M0MpCehiHzreSzNTczkc9d = [42!573], 0000413cf8, 022121001695, E49oi, 5050386e82, 7406822, maybe Canyon or canyon.jpg, and it could fit gist.github.com/davwheat/??? or puu.sh/??? or pastebin.com/??? My best bet was something like gist.github.com/davwheat/[42!573] $\endgroup$
    – Jan Ivan
    Aug 13, 2019 at 7:01
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    $\begingroup$ @JanIvan Checking the text contents of the file itself won't help. It's something else to do with the data for the image. $\endgroup$
    – David Wheatley
    Aug 13, 2019 at 17:14

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