Checkpoint 4: Hidden Data Investigation

Use only the teacher-provided synthetic Week 12 artifacts.

Submit

Your investigation package must contain:

• four challenge investigation records;
• the initial clue for each artifact;
• approved tool or method used;
• exact output or byte/metadata evidence;
• interpretation and limitation;
• layered transformation ledger where encoding is involved;
• the false-positive analysis;
• tool-category comparison;
• one peer teaching note that explains the method without simply giving away the flag.

Reproducibility requirement

A reviewer should be able to follow your recorded steps and reach the same classroom result without guessing what you clicked or transformed.

Defense question

Answer in 3-5 sentences:

Which clue was only suspicious, and which observation became actual evidence of hidden data?

Scoring

This is a teacher-reviewed mastery checkpoint.

The common GSC I rubric scores five areas from 0-4:

• technical accuracy
• evidence quality and reproducibility
• reasoning and trade-offs
• safety and authorization
• communication

Maximum: 20 points.

The Robotnix mastery target is 15/20 or higher with no criterion below 2. If the evidence is incomplete or a claim reaches beyond what the evidence supports, revise and resubmit.