Chaqs

CHAQS is a Capture The Flag game presented through an operating-system-style graphical interface. You use its Unix shell-inspired terminal, which provides dozens of commands and utilities, to complete challenges. The game’s challenges resemble ethical hacking but do not fully reflect real-world practice; some terminal commands can also be used for purposes beyond the game.

Terminal challenges

Challenges are missions that require you to provide the current answer before moving on to the next one. Beginner challenges offer guidance, and all terminal commands and utilities are available during challenges. The terminal includes commands for tasks such as file management, searching, networking, encoding, cryptography, steganography and system information. Its commands and utilities include:

• alias, apropos, amorse, ascii, audiodecoder, base, binary, brainfuck, calculate, cal, cat, cd, challenges, charon, checksum, clone, cronjob, count, cowsay, cp, cpdir, df, diff, dig, dirbuster, disconnect, dna, dtmf, du, echo, enum4chaqs, execute, exifsm, extract, factor, fibonacci, file, find, free, grep, hash-identifier, head, hex, history, hostname, imager, imap, import, interface, ip, ipconfig, kill, killall, linq2chaqs, logname, ls, man, mandb, mkdir, morse, mousemove, mv, mvdir, nc, neeko, nevr, nyx, permutation, piet, ping, provide, ps, pwd, pwsh+, qrsm, rename, renamedir, rm, rmdir, rot, save, scp, sfc, service, sort, sqlmap, ssh, steg, stegoimage, strings, submit, sysinfo, tac, tail, touch, traceroute, translate, trash, tree, uname, unzip, upload, uptime, wc, wget, whatis, whitespace, whoami, whois, xclip and xor.

Tools and programs

The execute command runs C# code files using CHAQS’s runtime compiler. Browser+ provides an in-game browser based on CEF, while other included programs and widgets include a video player, music player, notepad and photo gallery. Bliss Speech Recognizer turns voice commands into actions according to predefined methods.

Steganography and layout

CHAQS includes steganography tools such as stegoimage, which displays different image-channel results in a graphical interface, as well as the command-line programs amorse, audiodecoder, dtmf, steg and strings. Snap Layouts provide predefined zones for arranging applications in five ways.

System features

A keyboard hook lets you switch between programs in CHAQS and disables the operating system’s Alt+Tab combination while active; while it is on, you cannot use the operating system’s Alt and Tab keys. Automatic API Calls requests valid API call files found in the api folder under Documents when the game starts, then displays the results in the accessibility panel. The provide command lets you make custom API requests.

If enabled in the game settings, weather and map services use your IP address to determine your exact location, provide local weather information and show that location on a map. Whether this feature works depends on the API provider.