Obscura Academy

An interactive platform for learning cryptography, steganography, and coding through hands-on challenges.

About the Project

Obscura Academy is an interactive learning platform designed for beginners interested in cryptography, steganography, and coding. Inspired by ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) and internet mysteries, this academy provides an engaging way to explore encryption, hidden messages, and digital forensics.

• Learn fundamental cryptographic techniques like the Caesar cipher, Vigenère cipher, and substitution ciphers.
• Explore steganography, including hiding text in images and SSTV encoding.
• Develop basic coding skills with Python and HTML analysis.
• Solve interactive challenges where users must decrypt messages, analyze files, and uncover hidden clues.

Features

• Cryptography Lessons → Interactive explanations of classic ciphers.
• Steganography Exploration → Techniques for hiding and extracting messages from images and audio.
• File Analysis → Extract metadata, inspect hex data, and analyze file structures.
• Coding Basics → Learn Python, HTML, and useful developer tools.
• Interactive Challenges → Hands-on exercises to test and apply what you've learned.
• Built-in AI Assistant (The Oracle) → Ask cryptography-related questions and receive interactive challenges.

Built With

• Python → Core logic for cryptographic functions and challenges.
• Streamlit → Interactive web-based interface.
• pystegano → Used for hiding and extracting messages in images.
• pysstv → SSTV image-to-audio encoding.
• exifread & mutagen → Extract metadata from images, audio, and PDFs.
• PyPDF2 → Analyze and extract metadata from PDF files.
• OpenAI GPT-4o-mini → AI-powered cryptography assistant.

Installation & Setup

To run Obscura Academy on your local machine:

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/obscura-academy.git
cd obscura-academy

2. Install Required Dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Run the application

streamlit run main.py

Contributors

This project was created during the Kent Hack Enough 2025 Hackathon.

Developed by: Lucas Arantes

🔗 GitHub Repository: Obscura Academy

If you’d like to contribute, feel free to fork the project and submit pull requests!

Get Started

Run the app or check out the live version here:

Obscura Academy (Streamlit)