This weekend, I spent a little bit of time doing AeroCTF, but couldn’t maintain focus due to the sheer number of other active projects. I solved one challenge in the time allocated, a fairly straightforward AES padding game that you can download here.

Astoundingly, I have no writeups of any challenges like this, so here we go.

The vulnerability in the system is straightforward as can be: the server, using AES in ECB mode (i.e. an input block will always have the same output block), accepts some input and pads it into block-sized chunks. We’re able to manipulate this by controlling the plaintext to some degree (allowing us to insert an arbitrary block), which we compare to the last block:

From here, we can individually brute force the bytes of the key one byte at a time – we add one character to the prefix, causing one character (second last character of the flag) to be added to the final byte of the key. By brute forcing the additional prefix character, we can determine what the second last character of the flag is:

Assuming a few key functions are available, we can automate the attack. The solver script I used for this challenge is here.

Thanks to the AeroCTF team for putting these challenges together – while I didn’t manage to solve any more during the time allocated, the other challenge I began looking at (aerofloat) looked fairly well put together.

See you in UTCTF.