0xd13a

A rookie in a world of pwns

Boston Key Party CTF 2017 Writeup: Prudentialv2

Prudentialv2

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We fixed our challenge from two years ago.

http://54.202.82.13/

The site at the specified URL asks us to log in. Taking a closer look at the Web page source we see that it contains a link to a file:

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<a href="./index.txt">Level 1</a>

The file turns out to be the source of the page that checks the login. There is curious logic in it that at the first glance seems impossible to satisfy:

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<?php
require 'flag.php';

if (isset($_GET['name']) and isset($_GET['password'])) {
    $name = (string)$_GET['name'];
    $password = (string)$_GET['password'];

    if ($name == $password) {
        print 'Your password can not be your name.';
    } else if (sha1($name) === sha1($password)) {
      die('Flag: '.$flag);
    } else {
        print '<p class="alert">Invalid password.</p>';
    }
}
?>

What it boils down to is that string values of username and password have to be different, but their SHA1 hashes have to be the same! That would have been impossible if not for last Thursday’s Google announcement.

In its blog post Google refers to 2 PDF files that are different and yet have the same SHA1 hash values. Although the files are fairly big, the differences between them are small. We will take advantage of that and use the portions that are different (just 320 bytes) as the strings that we will submit as username and password. This way the strings will be different, but the hashes will be the same - just what we need.

Because the data is binary we need to URLEncode it:

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$ python
Python 2.7.12+ (default, Sep  1 2016, 20:27:38) 
[GCC 6.2.0 20160927] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import urllib
>>>
>>> urllib.quote(open("shattered-1.pdf","rb").read()[:320])
'%25PDF-1.3%0A%25%E2%E3%CF%D3%0A%0A%0A1%200%20obj%0A%3C%3C/Width%202%200%20R/Height%203%200%20R/Type%204%200%20R/Subtype%205%200%20R/Filter%206%200%20R/ColorSpace%207%200%20R/Length%208%200%20R/BitsPerComponent%208%3E%3E%0Astream%0A%FF%D8%FF%FE%00%24SHA-1%20is%20dead%21%21%21%21%21%85/%EC%09%239u%9C9%B1%A1%C6%3CL%97%E1%FF%FE%01sF%DC%91f%B6%7E%11%8F%02%9A%B6%21%B2V%0F%F9%CAg%CC%A8%C7%F8%5B%A8Ly%03%0C%2B%3D%E2%18%F8m%B3%A9%09%01%D5%DFE%C1O%26%FE%DF%B3%DC8%E9j%C2/%E7%BDr%8F%0EE%BC%E0F%D2%3CW%0F%EB%14%13%98%BBU.%F5%A0%A8%2B%E31%FE%A4%807%B8%B5%D7%1F%0E3.%DF%93%AC5%00%EBM%DC%0D%EC%C1%A8dy%0Cx%2Cv%21V%60%DD0%97%91%D0k%D0%AF%3F%98%CD%A4%BCF%29%B1'
>>>
>>> urllib.quote(open("shattered-2.pdf","rb").read()[:320])
'%25PDF-1.3%0A%25%E2%E3%CF%D3%0A%0A%0A1%200%20obj%0A%3C%3C/Width%202%200%20R/Height%203%200%20R/Type%204%200%20R/Subtype%205%200%20R/Filter%206%200%20R/ColorSpace%207%200%20R/Length%208%200%20R/BitsPerComponent%208%3E%3E%0Astream%0A%FF%D8%FF%FE%00%24SHA-1%20is%20dead%21%21%21%21%21%85/%EC%09%239u%9C9%B1%A1%C6%3CL%97%E1%FF%FE%01%7FF%DC%93%A6%B6%7E%01%3B%02%9A%AA%1D%B2V%0BE%CAg%D6%88%C7%F8K%8CLy%1F%E0%2B%3D%F6%14%F8m%B1i%09%01%C5kE%C1S%0A%FE%DF%B7%608%E9rr/%E7%ADr%8F%0EI%04%E0F%C20W%0F%E9%D4%13%98%AB%E1.%F5%BC%94%2B%E35B%A4%80-%98%B5%D7%0F%2A3.%C3%7F%AC5%14%E7M%DC%0F%2C%C1%A8t%CD%0Cx0Z%21Vda0%97%89%60k%D0%BF%3F%98%CD%A8%04F%29%A1'

We then submit the values as the username and password:

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GET http://54.202.82.13/?name=%25PDF-1.3%0A%25%E2%E3%CF%D3%0A%0A%0A1%200%20obj%0A%3C%3C/Width%202%200%20R/Height%203%200%20R/Type%204%200%20R/Subtype%205%200%20R/Filter%206%200%20R/ColorSpace%207%200%20R/Length%208%200%20R/BitsPerComponent%208%3E%3E%0Astream%0A%FF%D8%FF%FE%00%24SHA-1%20is%20dead%21%21%21%21%21%85/%EC%09%239u%9C9%B1%A1%C6%3CL%97%E1%FF%FE%01%7FF%DC%93%A6%B6%7E%01%3B%02%9A%AA%1D%B2V%0BE%CAg%D6%88%C7%F8K%8CLy%1F%E0%2B%3D%F6%14%F8m%B1i%09%01%C5kE%C1S%0A%FE%DF%B7%608%E9rr/%E7%ADr%8F%0EI%04%E0F%C20W%0F%E9%D4%13%98%AB%E1.%F5%BC%94%2B%E35B%A4%80-%98%B5%D7%0F%2A3.%C3%7F%AC5%14%E7M%DC%0F%2C%C1%A8t%CD%0Cx0Z%21Vda0%97%89%60k%D0%BF%3F%98%CD%A8%04F%29%A1&password=%25PDF-1.3%0A%25%E2%E3%CF%D3%0A%0A%0A1%200%20obj%0A%3C%3C/Width%202%200%20R/Height%203%200%20R/Type%204%200%20R/Subtype%205%200%20R/Filter%206%200%20R/ColorSpace%207%200%20R/Length%208%200%20R/BitsPerComponent%208%3E%3E%0Astream%0A%FF%D8%FF%FE%00%24SHA-1%20is%20dead%21%21%21%21%21%85/%EC%09%239u%9C9%B1%A1%C6%3CL%97%E1%FF%FE%01sF%DC%91f%B6%7E%11%8F%02%9A%B6%21%B2V%0F%F9%CAg%CC%A8%C7%F8%5B%A8Ly%03%0C%2B%3D%E2%18%F8m%B3%A9%09%01%D5%DFE%C1O%26%FE%DF%B3%DC8%E9j%C2/%E7%BDr%8F%0EE%BC%E0F%D2%3CW%0F%EB%14%13%98%BBU.%F5%A0%A8%2B%E31%FE%A4%807%B8%B5%D7%1F%0E3.%DF%93%AC5%00%EBM%DC%0D%EC%C1%A8dy%0Cx%2Cv%21V%60%DD0%97%91%D0k%D0%AF%3F%98%CD%A4%BCF%29%B1 HTTP/1.1
Host: 54.202.82.13
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Referer: http://54.202.82.13/
Connection: keep-alive

The response gets us the flag FLAG{AfterThursdayWeHadToReduceThePointValue}:

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HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 165
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2017 03:24:42 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.18 (Ubuntu)

<html>
<head>
	<title>level1</title>
    <link rel='stylesheet' href='style.css' type='text/css'>
</head>
<body>

Flag: FLAG{AfterThursdayWeHadToReduceThePointValue}