Character Encoding

In short, character encoding is the mapping between a character and a numerical value that can be stored in memory. Long ago, computers in North America used 7 bits to encode all characters, which provided a usable character-set of 128 different values. Since most computers dealt with 8 bits as a byte, these 7 bits were later extended to 8 bits, or 256 possible combinations. This ASCII standard was used for decades -- at least in North America.

As applications and operating systems were built to support more languages, it became clear that better encoding systems were needed. The UTF-8 and UTF-16 systems have become widely used as ways to encode characters from different languages.

You should be comfortable referencing the ASCII and UTF-8 tables to go between characters and values, either in decimal or hexadecimal form. UTF-16 is used in Java and in Windows programming, so it is possible to see that as well.

Bookmark ASCII and UTF-8 tables on your CTF workstation of choice.

Or try the following in one line Python script:

python -c "for i in range(32, 127): print('|', i, '|', hex(i), '|', chr(i), '|')"

ASCII / UTF-8 (American English) encoding: