Hack The Planet (Krypton)

I am somewhat new to the world of hacking and programming, but it is a field that I enjoy being in. My weapons of choice are Parrot for my OS, and Python for programming. 

By now you may have heard the story of the 3 gentlemen who cracked the Z-340, the code used by The Zodiac killer, this really got me interested into completing a challenge I had started a few years ago, but never completed. 

The fantastic site Over The Wire, has some great hacking challenges that range the gambit of skill level. It is community created, so the difficulty levels sometimes isn't accurate, but they are all solvable non the less.

The particular challenge I'm speaking of is cleverly called Krypton, because it’s a crypto challenge, on the main page you are given hints and examples of how the encryption of that level works and it is up to you to hack in, find the files you need and decipher the code. Super cool. 

I've noticed a few things reading the levels, some of them might need some work to help shift the letters to the correct position to be able to do what is needed to solve the level.

This is where python comes in for me. I'm very much a project-based learner, I found that that is the best way for me to learn.

So the plan is to use python to create little scripts that would help me take in the alphabet text and manipulate it in the way suggested to get the result desired, and by that, it would be a 3-in-1 kind of project. I get to do some basic hacking, I get to learn some coding, and learn about cryptography. 

Do you have a similar learning project? Or have any tips for me? I hope this post has given you some ideas. 

This has been ryn0f1sh, The King of N00bs