Binary

Binary challenges for Haaukins Platform.

Binary

Binary exploitation is the process of subverting a compiled application such that it violates some trust boundary in a way that is advantageous to the attacker. It comes down by abusing vulnerabilities that corrupt memory in software or by finding a vulnerability in the program and exploiting it in order to escalate privileges.

Difficulty Levels

The levels of difficulty scale is based on the number of steps required in order to solve the Training Challenge

  • Very Easy​: It requires just one step in order to get the flag
  • __Easy:__​ It requires one-two steps, it is based on the challenge category
  • Medium​: It requires two-three steps, it is based on the challenge category
  • Hard: ​It requires three-four steps based on the challenge category
  • __Very Hard:__​ It requires several steps in order to get the flag

Bittit Account Recovery

Points: 27 Difficulty: Easy

Learning Objectives:

  • Improvement of binary exploitation skills, such as overflowing the stack.
  • Getting more comfortable with Assembly code and tools like GDB and objdump.

Description:
This challenge requires that the user bypasses a nonpermissive program flow in a binary containing an encrypted username and password. A pretend online forum has implemented an ‘alternative’ account recovery policy. The user downloads the binary from the website, and can then obtain the username and password through binary exploitation. Logging in with these credentials prints the flag.

Prerequisite:

  • Knowledge about the x86-64 instruction set.
  • Knowledge about GDB or a similar tool.
  • Knowledge about how the stack can be overwritten by exploiting functions like gets().

Set User ID

Points: ​ 30 Difficulty: ​Easy

Learning Objectives:

  • Learn how to escalate the privilege and get root access
  • ​Scanning a system to check if programs have specific privileges

Description: ​In this challenge the users will have access to an SSH session in which there are a file containing the flag. That file is only readable by user with root privileges. In order to solve the challenge the user will have to find the command for which is set the SUID bit and then escalate privileges in order to open the file containing the flag.

Prerequisite:

  • Basic usage of Linux from command line
  • Know Linux user permissions

Format String Exploitation

Points: ​ 35 Difficulty: ​Medium

Learning Objectives:

  • Learn how to read data from the stack using format strings while avoiding memory access violations.

Description: This challenge is about utilizing a simple format string exploit. A program named FormatString plays a game with the user, who has to guess the password, while the program repeats the user’s guesses, using printf() on the input string. As it turns out, printf(), along with similar functions, has the quirk that it will carelessly read data off the stack when it looks for arguments corresponding to format specifiers in its control string - even when no arguments are specified, e.g.:

printf("%s %x %d %c");

Providing input with the right format specifiers will make the program slip up and reveal the password, hiding somewhere on the stack, on its own accord. Entering the password will make the program print the flag.

Prerequisite:

  • Knowledge of where and how functions in the printf() school of thought look for their arguments.
  • Basic knowledge of how the stack and its frames are organized.
  • Basic knowledge of memory access through pointers and when they are legal/illegal (e.g. Segmentation faults).

CorROPtion, please!

Points: 60 Difficulty: Hard

Learning Objectives:

  • Learn how to do memory corruption with ROP when the stack is not executable.
  • Get more hands-on tinkering experience with x86-64, binary files/tools etc.

Description:
In this challenge, the user is given a binary file with a buffer overflow vulnerability on the stack. A function must be called with specific parameters in order to print the flag. The stack is non-executable, but ROP can be used to orchestrate the call, by “borrowing” data and code snippets lying around in the binary.

Prerequisite:

  • Knowledge about the possibility of corrupting stack memory, when gets() from the C Standard Library fetches user input.
  • Knowledge about how different file hardening techniques like stack-executability, canaries and PIE make exploits possible/“impossible”.
  • Knowledge about the broad-strokes layout of binary files, e.g. where hard-coded data is stored.
  • Knowledge about the role of the stack and how stack memory is managed.
  • Working knowledge about the x86-64 instruction set, corresponding to an undergraduate course.
  • Comfortable with using the GDB and binutils in the terminal to solve a challenge.
  • Knowledge about Python and Bash is useful for delivering the payload.

Shrunk-Chunk Heap Overflow

Points: ​ 70 Difficulty: ​hard

Learning Objectives:

  • Knowledge of how metadata on the heap itself is used for its memory management, and how it can be exploited.
  • Knowledge of how certain sequences of (de)allocations on the heap can produce overlapping chunks in previous glibc versions.
  • Knowledge of how the difference between stack and heap memory management provides different approaches for buffer overflow attacks.
  • Proficiency in examining the state of the heap and its allocations during runtime.
  • Better understanding of how malloc, free and similar functions work.

Description: This challenge is based on an overflow vulnerability in glibc popularized in a paper named ‘Glibc Adventures: The Forgotten Chunks’. It has only been patched in relatively recent releases compared to other heap exploits. In essence, an overflow of a single null byte corrupting heap metadata and a specific sequence of malloc/free calls leads to two chunks on the heap overlapping. This is possible due to an absence of security checks in dynamic memory management. Since there are two overlapping allocations, exploiters might have indirect control over the memory area that the heap manager has “forgotten about” through another area. This opens up a lot of possibilities for memory writes and redirection of program execution. In this challenge users will be presented with a binary (source code available) with a seemingly harmless “off-by-one” error causing the above vulnerability. By causing heap overflow with a single null byte the users can overwrite a global function pointer, redirecting program execution to call print_flag(). The program itself is fairly contrived and artificial in the way that it works, but this was chosen in order to provide a better signal-to noise-ratio for the users: Tracking several malloc/free calls will be important for solving the challenge. It runs inside a Debian 8.11 image utilizing a vulnerable glibc 2.19 implementation, and all default protection measures are in place.

Prerequisite:

  • Knowledge of the C programming language and commonly used functions in its standard library - namely strlen, strcpy, malloc and free.
  • Knowledge of the existence of metadata on the heap itself in order to perform dynamic memory management.
  • Knowledge of the ELF format and the exploitability of the .got.plt table to redirect program execution.
  • Ability to use tools such as GDB, objdump and ltrace to examine binary files and runtime memory state.
  • Ability to use Bash or Python in order to provide long/hexadecimal input to the program.

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