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I have a piece of Base64 that I have been tasked with decoding. I am not sure what the resulting output is supposed to be, but it is not an image because it does not decode when I try that, and when I try to convert it to text, here is what I get (It is in a code block because the backtick characters in the garbled text were causing inline code formatting issues.):

Xaì`N Þ­;zåLã´Üc^»7adi[³øòÜDG0ų%¯úÆfo`5Yý'¸a½¯8úßÐK4pôÙ%@ãYüî»Ux¨>ib{1.õ6Üy¨kº·X@ª%ýñòïÀÆVíd
§ªÃq§QAWýðÆ+@Ñ?]áKõ2кo<GÁóAé.\Pï1v\"§ê½

The Base64 encoding is:

hgABAgFYYZzsYE4g3q07euVM47STGtxjXrs3kYJhZAFpW7OI+PLcnIlERzDFs4slr/rGZm9gkwg1
Wf0nuGG9rzib+t/QSzRw9NklQONZ/H/uux9VeBCoPmliE3sxLvU2kp3ceahrurdYQKolH/3x8u/A
xlbtn2QBDaeqw3Ebp1FBiFf98MYrQNE/XYrhlUv1MtC6bzyVR8HzQYDpLlxQFO8xDnZcIqfqvQM=

What am I doing wrong?

Base64
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1 Answers1

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You are doing nothing wrong AFAIK. The base64 decodes well as the following data stream:

00000000  86 00 01 02 01 58 61 9c  ec 60 4e 20 de ad 3b 7a  |.....Xa..`N ..;z|
00000010  e5 4c e3 b4 93 1a dc 63  5e bb 37 91 82 61 64 01  |.L.....c^.7..ad.|
00000020  69 5b b3 88 f8 f2 dc 9c  89 44 47 30 c5 b3 8b 25  |i[.......DG0...%|
00000030  af fa c6 66 6f 60 93 08  35 59 fd 27 b8 61 bd af  |...fo`..5Y.'.a..|
00000040  38 9b fa df d0 4b 34 70  f4 d9 25 40 e3 59 fc 7f  |8....K4p..%@.Y..|
00000050  ee bb 1f 55 78 10 a8 3e  69 62 13 7b 31 2e f5 36  |...Ux..>ib.{1..6|
00000060  92 9d dc 79 a8 6b ba b7  58 40 aa 25 1f fd f1 f2  |...y.k..X@.%....|
00000070  ef c0 c6 56 ed 9f 64 01  0d a7 aa c3 71 1b a7 51  |...V..d.....q..Q|
00000080  41 88 57 fd f0 c6 2b 40  d1 3f 5d 8a e1 95 4b f5  |A.W...+@.?]...K.|
00000090  32 d0 ba 6f 3c 95 47 c1  f3 41 80 e9 2e 5c 50 14  |2..o<.G..A...\P.|
000000a0  ef 31 0e 76 5c 22 a7 ea  bd 03                    |.1.v\"....|

... which is indeed neither text nor an image, just binary data. You must ask for a hint of what they are supposed to be.

xhienne
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