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Spotting base64 encoded JSON, certificates, and private keys

A colleague was able to spot that a long string of gibberish was base64 encoded json. I couldn't believe he was base64 decoding on the fly without tools, so I asked him how he did it. It turns out that everyone can spot base64 encoded json.

I was working on my homelab and examined a file that was supposed to contain encrypted content that I could safely commit on a Github repository. As tyzbit reported on the fediverse, you can even spot base64 encoded certificates and private keys! Thanks Davide and Denis for showing me this simple but pretty useful trick, and thanks tyzbit for completing it with certs and private keys!

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