Desktop appForbidden Cheese Development
bear@forge:~$ ./run
ForbiddenToolkit
One window, four tools — every CTF favor you keep begging a dozen sketchy websites for, running offline on your own machine.
Encode and decode six formats, name a mystery hash, rip the strings out of any file, and dump an image’s metadata — all local, all in one place. No browser tabs. No “free online decoder” quietly keeping your input.
A CTF swiss-army knife that never leaves your desk.
ForbiddenToolkit is four small, sharp tools in one window: an encoder/decoder, a hash identifier, a strings extractor, and an EXIF metadata dumper. The exact set of chores that come up every single CTF night — and that most people solve by pasting sensitive data into whatever “free online tool” ranks first on Google.
This one runs on your machine, offline, in one place. Your ciphertext, your hashes, your files — none of it goes anywhere. Built in Python, bundled with everything it needs.
Four tabs. Everything ready.
Encode / Decode
Flip text through six schemes, both directions, instantly — the everyday grind of any crypto challenge.
Hash ID
Paste a mystery hash and it names the type — MD5, SHA-1, bcrypt, and the rest of the lineup — so you know what you’re actually cracking.
Strings
Pull every printable string out of any file. The fastest possible first look inside a binary you don’t trust yet.
EXIF Dump
Rip the full metadata out of an image via ExifTool — camera, coordinates, timestamps, the lot. Half of forensics starts here.
It grunts when it works.
Toolkit is not a silent citizen. It greets you on launch, chimes when it hands back a result, makes a distinctly disappointed noise when it finds nothing, and barks on an error. There’s a mute button in the corner for when you’d rather work in silence — and an “Oops” button that re-wakes the audio if it ever nods off.
Nothing leaves the room.
No accounts, no cloud calls, no telemetry. It ships with ExifTool bundled and asks for nothing but Python. The whole point is that the sensitive stuff you paste into it stays exactly where you pasted it.
Take it to your own bench.
Clone it, install the handful of Python deps, and run. The README walks the rest, and the installer bundles ExifTool so you don’t have to chase it down.
Requires: Python 3 · ExifTool (bundled in the installer). Windows-first; the guts are plain Python.