Challenge description

To our surprise, we found out that our challenge from last year has been counterfeited by another CTF.

Since we must protect our flag business as much as we can, we invested in the most secure technology around : the cloud™®©.

Since each device is uniquely fingerprinted, we are confident that our unclonable devices will be safe from those french knockoffs.



More info :

- If the board fails to connect to the cloud, perform a hard reset (ie. disconnect it completely before rebooting it)

- The cloud endpoint used to get the flag is /flag , in case you need to guess it

And a .tgz is given, containing the 3 firmwares of the 3 available boards:

$ ls -l

total 1376

-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 287536 mars 27 2019 board-2.bin

-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 287536 mars 27 2019 board-3.bin

-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 287536 mars 27 2019 board-4.bin

-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 545222 mars 22 18:17 firmwares-d1bd1fcbfb1fdef7678608460ed96b16074aae3f43ed052ebcc3e2724d7efc27.tgz

$ sha256sum board-*

aadc9e62ba75bda60b1412d0514bae00a28f51636c1291590e70c217bcf25a2f board-2.bin

27e7b7d39566bbdbd109a56e50f546681770ef3fad261118d64e1319ff0d53e7 board-3.bin

32682457545043f8611078d43549cf4414f9f0bd29700c1f2c42ad80d5013229 board-4.bin

Understanding what to do

As this challenge looks not trivial at all, I’ve spent 15 minutes on understanding the goal and the path to achieve the job. All the 3 boards are in free access on a desk beside the organisation team.

Picture of the board number 2

When you power-up the device using the black USB cable, it start running and show the activity on the network connector. As this device is a development board, the left secable part is a ST-Link V2 ready to handle the right part of the board, composed of the main MCU and a few components. Connecting a PC to the USB port and running it with the official ST-Link utility give you this trace:

19:53:18 : ST-LINK SN : 0669FF494849887767175629

19:53:18 : ST-LINK Firmware version : V2J29M18

19:53:18 : Connected via SWD.

19:53:18 : SWD Frequency = 4,0 MHz.

19:53:18 : Connection mode : Connect Under Reset.

19:53:18 : Debug in Low Power mode enabled.

19:53:18 : Device ID:0x419

19:53:18 : Device family :STM32F42xxx/F43xxx

19:53:18 : Can not read memory!

Disable Read Out Protection and retry.

The MCU is protected, but the ST-link is non altered and can be used.

Now let’s see if the virtual COM port (VCP) is mapped by the ST-Link for debug purpose. Just start a terminal and RESET the board to have a look at the boot sequence:

Starting mbed-os-example-tls/tls-client

Using Mbed OS 5.11.5

Successfully connected to perfectlyunbreakable-cloud.insomni.hack at port 443

Starting the TLS handshake…

Successfully completed the TLS handshake

Server certificate:

cert. version : 1

serial number : 29:98:FB:FA:5B:65:0A:2D:15:E0:A4:BF:9B:06:6C:0B:1D:72:C8:8A

issuer name : C=CH, ST=Geneva, O=Insomni'hack

subject name : C=CH, ST=Geneva, O=Insomni'hack, CN=perfectlyunbreakable-cloud.insomni.hack

issued on : 2019-03-14 11:00:24

expires on : 2020-07-26 11:00:24

signed using : ECDSA with SHA256

EC key size : 256 bits



Certificate verification passed

Established TLS connection to perfectlyunbreakable-cloud.insomni.hack

HTTP: Received 175 chars from server

HTTP: Received '200 OK' status … OK

HTTP: Received message:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Server: nginx

Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2019 18:11:52 GMT

Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

Content-Length: 20

Connection: keep-alive



Cloud connection OK.



DONE

At this point, nothing other is possible over the serial port, impossible to send command to the board.

The next check is to try to connect with a regular PC from LAN of the CTF to the URL https://perfectlyunbreakable-cloud.insomni.hack/ and see what happened:

No way to connect to the « secure cloud »

To summarize: The goal is to connect to the https://perfectlyunbreakable-cloud.insomni.hack/flag URL. I can deduce that only the official boards can do it because they own a client side certificate in their flash. So, the only way to connect to /flag with a regular browser is to steal the private certificate key from the flash of the MCU and import it to the browser.

Let’s start the reverse

Check the difference between all the 3 firmwares

As the authors gives you the 3 binary firmwares from the 3 running board, this looks too simple to spot the certificate by this way, but let’s try it.

The client side public certificate change …

… and a few bytes too

The public certificate is the first difference, and the 32 bytes at offset 0x080437B0 is the second one. The second one is the most interesting because it should be the —–BEGIN PRIVATE KEY—– but it was not the case.

Let’s the long reverse start

Now it’s time to reverse the 281KB STM32 firmware file… And guess what, just to be sure to maximise the complexity of the task, let’s use a newcomer: Ghidra!

The tool worth a look and from my previous tests, the ARM-thumb decompiler was fine on all the examples I’ve tried.

Load the file

Loading the firmware and giving at this first stage the correct description to Ghidra is mandatory. The STM32 used for the challenge is a STM32F42xxx/F43xxx (according to the previous ST-Link trace). Checking in the reference guide for the ARM level instruction will point you Cortex-M4. And if you dig more, you’ll find it’s an ARMv7E ISA. The mistake I’ve done is to select in Ghidra the ARM v7 little endian target. The correct one is Cortex (thanks Balda for the correction):

Set the correct target

And do not forget to set the base address of the firmware:

0x08000000 came from reference guide

Finding interesting stuff

Now we need to find the public and private key in the firmware. For the pub cert chain, it’s trivial, just need to look for strings « BEGIN CERTIFICATE »:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----

MIIBgzCCASoCFCmY+/pbZQotFeCkv5sGbAsdcsiLMAoGCCqGSM49BAMCMDUxCzAJ

BgNVBAYTAkNIMQ8wDQYDVQQIDAZHZW5ldmExFTATBgNVBAoMDEluc29tbmknaGFj

azAeFw0xOTAzMTQxNjA3NDZaFw0yMDA3MjYxNjA3NDZaMFQxCzAJBgNVBAYTAkNI

MQ8wDQYDVQQIDAZHZW5ldmExFTATBgNVBAoMDEluc29tbmknaGFjazEdMBsGA1UE

AwwUYm9hcmQtMi5pbnNvbW5pLmhhY2swWTATBgcqhkjOPQIBBggqhkjOPQMBBwNC

AAQ6ezsYJBMBjVBhWLjPzcZjSv7/z4WQZI/820/RgryR+phEx6oY8EE8+EVA5+Jg

XuhIoTvirMKnhWkHBu+NtNNLMAoGCCqGSM49BAMCA0cAMEQCIDQgEWRfMgl78w68

92AYoRIrkLVMKmXHj6Kibqm0h66PAiAgaJnY8NgDzEXXcgnk7uKSJr5weal9b7mX

fTP+lQ8dGw==

-----END CERTIFICATE-----



-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----

MIIBwDCCAWWgAwIBAgIURc/ib+oKmFi+wE2R8p4frfrjZxowCgYIKoZIzj0EAwIw

NTELMAkGA1UEBhMCQ0gxDzANBgNVBAgMBkdlbmV2YTEVMBMGA1UECgwMSW5zb21u

aSdoYWNrMB4XDTE5MDMxNDEwNDkwOVoXDTE5MDQxMzEwNDkwOVowNTELMAkGA1UE

BhMCQ0gxDzANBgNVBAgMBkdlbmV2YTEVMBMGA1UECgwMSW5zb21uaSdoYWNrMFkw

EwYHKoZIzj0CAQYIKoZIzj0DAQcDQgAEYrOHfsBHEvA71iU0GvRp2MT0XflBCWwh

EJ2OkM6uI1C4dg8OfNul7CrqOz3/vxJ/aMWOCcwcfadSkMuXLnWdgaNTMFEwHQYD

VR0OBBYEFN4XdSOEDDc8mhd1Z5sJS0iXLaSbMB8GA1UdIwQYMBaAFN4XdSOEDDc8

mhd1Z5sJS0iXLaSbMA8GA1UdEwEB/wQFMAMBAf8wCgYIKoZIzj0EAwIDSQAwRgIh

AOBd8Q53tDEVhQHeZr4vZa7cVZIi0xW3JzT6y1TIOpDjAiEAxvmsQdLwf3SYVzlf

OQTTWPLAob+l+gyqt5Cfq5f6j4Y=

-----END CERTIFICATE-----

But now the complex things start: where the f*ck is the private key… At this point you have no choice to understand how the HTTPS connection is done to the server. The first and winning idea is to take back the serial log and try to identify the SDK used. At the beginning « Mbed OS 5.11.5 » explicitly give you the answer. Then, you need to dig more for guessing how the TLS is done.

The interesting part is :

Starting the TLS handshake…

Successfully completed the TLS handshake

After a few minutes digging with Google, this PAGE give you nearly the same trace I’ve obtain through the serial interface. From this sample code found in the SDK, you can find your way in the firmware:

SDK: allocating the object « HelloHttpsClient »

Decompiled version

As I’ve never pay attention on how to reverse some C++ code in an embedded target, I was stuck by the pointer added to a method without parameter in the original source code. Ghidra is doing a good job, but you need to understand that the pointer renamed here « complexStruct » is the pointer to the current memory segment of the instance of the object.

Then, digging more in the TLS part is needed. According to the SDK, using a client private certificate measn you need to call the function « mbedtls_ssl_conf_own_cert ». By searching in the strings I found « mbedtls_ssl_conf_own_cert() returned -0x%04X » and a XREF. This code is setting up the certificate pub/priv key pair:

Generation and setup of the private key

Now, it’s time to study the function genPrivateKey() and see how it works:

Computing the private key

The funniest part of the challenge is here. This code is nothing more than a bitwise AND with 2 offset in memory. One in flash, OK, but the other one in a non initialized SRAM zone! Now it’s time to have a look at the hint given during the CTF:

Fri Mar 22 2019, 22:20:22 [Perfectly Unbreakable Flag Hint]

The title acronym means something else in the hardware community!



« PUF » acronym. What? Google point THIS page. My friend dok tells me, « I know what it is, it’s something you can’t clone because it use some physical unpredictable parameter ». But in the current case the PUF function is the SRAM at boot. 64 bytes are used as the private key. But, as there is some flipping bits in those 64 bytes during the powerup sequence, another 64 bytes table is used as mask for keeping only the stables states bits, and remove the flipping one. This tech needs to boot a huge number of time the board to monitor the states of the 8×64 bits and only keep the stable one. That’s a REALLY GOOD TRIX!

Now I need to dump the content of the SRAM3, forgotten during the first dump 🙂 . It’s quite easy, even with the protection fuse set. You just need to connect your PC, run the ST-Link utility and press « connect », then on the target hit RESET and at the very first moment of the boot you can dump the whole SRAM zone. Even if the debug port is closed.

With the memory dump and the flash dump, here is the code who compute and display the private key:

import base64

sram = "\x09\xE6\xF1\x20\x32\xE2\x38\xDD\xCF\x29\x27\x7F\x6F\xEB\x76\x34\x40\xC4\x44\xDC\xCA\xCD\x3B\x87\x0B\xAB\xE1\xB8\xE8\x80\x7B\x9B\x3B\xAA\xD5\x04\x61\xCA\xA2\x91\x66\x32\x49\xDF\xE5\x42\x98\xF5\x98\xB2\x37\x7E\x7E\xEB\xFD\x2E\xAB\xC1\x9F\x5A\xC0\xE3\xFF\xD9"

flash = "\x59\x3D\x32\xFE\x47\xA5\x4A\x85\x88\x35\x4E\x27\x63\x49\x37\xB6\xFF\x1B\xBE\xC2\xCE\x63\x95\xAB\x30\x3F\x77\x9D\x59\xD3\xE2\x75\xDD\xFF\x1E\x03\x2E\xF1\xEE\xE1\x52\xE8\xAA\x8B\x0E\x9D\xFA\xEA\x4E\x3D\x79\x0C\xD7\xEB\xBD\x7E\x73\x35\x9E\x5B\xBE\x5D\x42\xD7"

res = []

for x in range(len(sram)) :

res.append( ord(sram[x]) & ord(flash[x]) )

print("Private key = ",res)



python3 decode.py

Private key = [9, 36, 48, 32, 2, 160, 8, 133, 136, 33, 6, 39, 99, 73, 54, 52, 64, 0, 4, 192, 202, 65, 17, 131, 0, 43, 97, 152, 72, 128, 98, 17, 25, 170, 20, 0, 32, 192, 162, 129, 66, 32, 8, 139, 4, 0, 152, 224, 8, 48, 49, 12, 86, 235, 189, 46, 35, 1, 158, 90, 128, 65, 66, 209]

At this point it was 3H56. My first think was « shit, it miss me 10 minutes to generate the private key and solve the challenge ».

continue the reverse at home

As it’s always a big deception to not finish a challenge in time, I continue at home to solve it. But I was wrong. It was far more complex to finish the reverse until the flag, and the 10 minutes changed to another 4 hours of job.

After obtaining the bits from SRAM who doesn’t flip, you need to reverse this:

Unknown hash function

And the funny stuff is for example:

no way to understand what’s running here…

This one doesn’t decompile, and the ASM view is not so clear. My guess is this an interrupt hook to an external crypto-engine who run in a few cycles a cryptographic function.

To help identifying the function, I’ve download an official TLS library from Mbed: mbedtls-2.16.0-apache.tgz. With this reference source code, the unknown function can be commented and is a little bit more readable:

a clean SHA256 code

If you think it’s trivial now, your right but with the solution on the eyes it’s more easy, believe me 😉 . So the unknown part of the private key become:

import base64

import hashlib

from array import array



sram = "\x09\xE6\xF1\x20\x32\xE2\x38\xDD\xCF\x29\x27\x7F\x6F\xEB\x76\x34\x40\xC4\x44\xDC\xCA\xCD\x3B\x87\x0B\xAB\xE1\xB8\xE8\x80\x7B\x9B\x3B\xAA\xD5\x04\x61\xCA\xA2\x91\x66\x32\x49\xDF\xE5\x42\x98\xF5\x98\xB2\x37\x7E\x7E\xEB\xFD\x2E\xAB\xC1\x9F\x5A\xC0\xE3\xFF\xD9"

flash = "\x59\x3D\x32\xFE\x47\xA5\x4A\x85\x88\x35\x4E\x27\x63\x49\x37\xB6\xFF\x1B\xBE\xC2\xCE\x63\x95\xAB\x30\x3F\x77\x9D\x59\xD3\xE2\x75\xDD\xFF\x1E\x03\x2E\xF1\xEE\xE1\x52\xE8\xAA\x8B\x0E\x9D\xFA\xEA\x4E\x3D\x79\x0C\xD7\xEB\xBD\x7E\x73\x35\x9E\x5B\xBE\x5D\x42\xD7"



res = []



for x in range(len(sram)) :

res.append( chr(ord(sram[x]) & ord(flash[x])) )

res = array('B', map(ord,res)).tostring()



print("Private key = ",res)

print("sha256 = " , hashlib.sha256(res).hexdigest())





$ python decode.py

Private key = b"\t$0 \x02\xa0\x08\x85\x88!\x06'cI64@\x00\x04\xc0\xcaA\x11\x83\x00+a\x98H\x80b\x11\x19\xaa\x14\x00 \xc0\xa2\x81B \x08\x8b\x04\x00\x98\xe0\x0801\x0cV\xeb\xbd.#\x01\x9eZ\x80AB\xd1"

sha256 = 8e140886f96ef269e736cb1fe24ea12627df6971f32d6c15b6cbc2810af19382



Fake the board and grab the flag

Now it’s time to start a little bit of crypto. EDIT: no, not a little! I have something looking like the private key and the full chain of certificate. I need to craft a correct certificate, so I can deploy it and visit the /flag URL. If you wonder how I can do that after the CTF you’re right: I have asked to the creators of the challenge the Docker files to run it here and finish the work.

First, craft the private key. For this one you need to generate the ECC correct private + public key file in .pem format. I never found a regular way working because of a lack of knowledge in certificate / keys manipulation. Thanks to Sylvain for correct my silly Python code. The use an enhanced Python crypto lib is needed, I’ve used Pycryptodome.

$ pip install pycryptodome



$ cat genKey.py

from Crypto.PublicKey import ECC



e=ECC.construct(curve="prime256v1", d=0x8e140886f96ef269e736cb1fe24ea12627df6971f32d6c15b6cbc2810af19382)



print e.export_key(format="PEM")



$ python2 genKey.py > privateKey.pem

$ cat privateKey.pem

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----

MIGHAgEAMBMGByqGSM49AgEGCCqGSM49AwEHBG0wawIBAQQgjhQIhvlu8mnnNssf

4k6hJiffaXHzLWwVtsvCgQrxk4KhRANCAAQ6ezsYJBMBjVBhWLjPzcZjSv7/z4WQ

ZI/820/RgryR+phEx6oY8EE8+EVA5+JgXuhIoTvirMKnhWkHBu+NtNNL

-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

Now you need to concatenate the 2 public certificates found in the flash of the board in a file called « chain.pem ». And finally generate a single file with all the stuff to import it on a regular browser:

$ openssl pkcs12 -inkey privateKey.pem -in chain.pem -export -out personnal.pfx



$ openssl pkcs12 -info -in personnal.pfx

Enter Import Password:

MAC: sha1, Iteration 2048

MAC length: 20, salt length: 8

PKCS7 Encrypted data: pbeWithSHA1And40BitRC2-CBC, Iteration 2048

Certificate bag

Bag Attributes

localKeyID: 95 5D 33 B2 38 0B 4C CE FC 46 DD 1C 55 17 63 45 5A 7A 17 82

subject=C = CH, ST = Geneva, O = Insomni'hack, CN = board-2.insomni.hack

issuer=C = CH, ST = Geneva, O = Insomni'hack

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----

MIIBgzCCASoCFCmY+/pbZQotFeCkv5sGbAsdcsiLMAoGCCqGSM49BAMCMDUxCzAJ

BgNVBAYTAkNIMQ8wDQYDVQQIDAZHZW5ldmExFTATBgNVBAoMDEluc29tbmknaGFj

azAeFw0xOTAzMTQxNjA3NDZaFw0yMDA3MjYxNjA3NDZaMFQxCzAJBgNVBAYTAkNI

MQ8wDQYDVQQIDAZHZW5ldmExFTATBgNVBAoMDEluc29tbmknaGFjazEdMBsGA1UE

AwwUYm9hcmQtMi5pbnNvbW5pLmhhY2swWTATBgcqhkjOPQIBBggqhkjOPQMBBwNC

AAQ6ezsYJBMBjVBhWLjPzcZjSv7/z4WQZI/820/RgryR+phEx6oY8EE8+EVA5+Jg

XuhIoTvirMKnhWkHBu+NtNNLMAoGCCqGSM49BAMCA0cAMEQCIDQgEWRfMgl78w68

92AYoRIrkLVMKmXHj6Kibqm0h66PAiAgaJnY8NgDzEXXcgnk7uKSJr5weal9b7mX

fTP+lQ8dGw==

-----END CERTIFICATE-----

Certificate bag

Bag Attributes:

subject=C = CH, ST = Geneva, O = Insomni'hack

issuer=C = CH, ST = Geneva, O = Insomni'hack

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----

MIIBwDCCAWWgAwIBAgIURc/ib+oKmFi+wE2R8p4frfrjZxowCgYIKoZIzj0EAwIw

NTELMAkGA1UEBhMCQ0gxDzANBgNVBAgMBkdlbmV2YTEVMBMGA1UECgwMSW5zb21u

aSdoYWNrMB4XDTE5MDMxNDEwNDkwOVoXDTE5MDQxMzEwNDkwOVowNTELMAkGA1UE

BhMCQ0gxDzANBgNVBAgMBkdlbmV2YTEVMBMGA1UECgwMSW5zb21uaSdoYWNrMFkw

EwYHKoZIzj0CAQYIKoZIzj0DAQcDQgAEYrOHfsBHEvA71iU0GvRp2MT0XflBCWwh

EJ2OkM6uI1C4dg8OfNul7CrqOz3/vxJ/aMWOCcwcfadSkMuXLnWdgaNTMFEwHQYD

VR0OBBYEFN4XdSOEDDc8mhd1Z5sJS0iXLaSbMB8GA1UdIwQYMBaAFN4XdSOEDDc8

mhd1Z5sJS0iXLaSbMA8GA1UdEwEB/wQFMAMBAf8wCgYIKoZIzj0EAwIDSQAwRgIh

AOBd8Q53tDEVhQHeZr4vZa7cVZIi0xW3JzT6y1TIOpDjAiEAxvmsQdLwf3SYVzlf

OQTTWPLAob+l+gyqt5Cfq5f6j4Y=

-----END CERTIFICATE-----

PKCS7 Data

Shrouded Keybag: pbeWithSHA1And3-KeyTripleDES-CBC, Iteration 2048

Bag Attributes

localKeyID: 95 5D 33 B2 38 0B 4C CE FC 46 DD 1C 55 17 63 45 5A 7A 17 82

Key Attributes:

Enter PEM pass phrase:

Verifying - Enter PEM pass phrase:

-----BEGIN ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY-----

MIHjME4GCSqGSIb3DQEFDTBBMCkGCSqGSIb3DQEFDDAcBAimiYHm+GS83AICCAAw

DAYIKoZIhvcNAgkFADAUBggqhkiG9w0DBwQIpZKgXjFIC3IEgZAPX/83qeR2bwPn

/HDKhevSpTlqqzvT2NDxMdI907kMggHfVNgCY2rzMP3Bmk9F+CpdgpFPNFSP2gWV

iNDxGRusXAIDg3to2ZRCmt31/31idQwFgDqW2LqawXv0TCWit6Y22su7uDKDz0Vw

w2FZXeM26zGl+hkL0QJIuSqmyMhrncUzJdGxGWfXENKaee9JsMw=

-----END ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY-----

One fuckin’ thing to know: if you don’t set a password to your .pfx file, Firefox will fail silently to import it.

Another funny thing: at this point you don’t know if there is more computing on the 32 bytes used for generate the private key. The firmware is so huge, you can’t check all functions between the last key manipulation and the TCP_connect to the HTTPS port. You just need to try and pray…

Now you just need to connect to the super-secure cloud with the fake credz:

The extracted certificate roxx !!!

And now you just need to grab the flag:

The flag, hum

No, not exactly the flag …

Finish him

I was wondering the needs to this last step, who’ve made lost the flag to Marius (@nSinusR) from Tasteless (@TeamTasteless). Yes, Marius arrived during the CTF at this point at 3h55. It’s the difference between skilled teams and amateurs 🙂 . As we have access to the boards, we have the firmware, it would have been possible to patch the board to connect directly to the url https://perfectlyunbreakable-cloud.insomni.hack/flag instead of https://perfectlyunbreakable-cloud.insomni.hack/ during the boot sequence. So the last step involve the private key you’ve used for generate the certificate as a proof of work. To remove the AES-CBC I’ve used Openssl:

$ hexdump -C flag.enc

00000000 0f b8 b7 c7 53 8e 1e 20 93 ea 93 13 e3 08 9f 46 |….S.. …….F|

00000010 1e cb 13 8e 42 28 d0 46 52 39 27 28 09 15 2a cf |….B(.FR9'(..*.|

$ openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -d -in flag.enc -K '8e140886f96ef269e736cb1fe24ea12627df6971f32d6c15b6cbc2810af19382' -iv ' 00000000000000000000000000000000'

INS{R3v3Ng3_0f_t3h_Cl0n3S}

$



Conclusion

I personally go to Insomni’Hack CTF for one thing: the hardware challenges. This year 2 challenges were here for our pleasure. The first one from @_noskill of http://fixme.ch/ , intern at SCRT at the moment, were cool and a good warm-up (write-up from Sylvain of DUKS HERE). And this « monster » from Balda & Sylvain.

I must say this challenge occupy me during the whole CTF. I’ve learn a tech’ I’ve never seen before, the PUF concept is really funny and, I guess, used IRL. Solving a task close to a real project is far away more exiting, and it was the case here! Using Ghidra was a good experience, I’ll do it again and hope to forget ASAP IDA-PRO to focus only on this wonderful open-source tool.

A little regret on this one is the missing in the description of the « crypto » categorie. With this more accurate description I would not tried it alone, and I would asked for some helps to other members of the team at the very first moment of the CTF. And the complexity was too much for a 10 hours CTF, so the task wasn’t solved at 4h00 by anyone. To be honest, without the help of the conceptors, I’ll not be able to solve it, even afterwards (I guess I would ragequit() before the flag 🙂 ).

The troll

From the description: « To our surprise, we found out that our challenge from last year has been counterfeited by another CTF. » is well sent 🙂 . Last year I solved in 3 minutes the hardware challenge, because the flash read protection fuse on the STM32 was forgotten (write-up HERE). In November 2018 Balda got a kind word at GreHack CTF on the first hardware challenge :

"An Insomni'Hack 2018 tribute": Was a 400 points at Insomni'hack and is only a 50 points at GreHack ... with the good tools ( Hello Baldanos 🙂 )

This year you win, so 1 – 1. See you the 15th of November for the next edition of GreHack 😉 .

Credits & Greetings

Nice challenge by Baldanos (@Baldanos) and Sylvain (@Pelissier_S). Thanks for your time and the technical trix on Ghidra during the CTF. Big up guyz!

Thanks to Azox (@8008135_) for help me at … 3H25! Pretty sure that together we would solve it in time, bourricot 🙂 !

Thanks to Marius (@nSinusR) from Tasteless (@TeamTasteless) for review & suggestions on this write-up.

And also thanks to the SCRT team, especially Michael (@0xGrimmlin) for making things possible 😉 . See you next year!

Write-up by Phil (@PagetPhil) 27/03/2019

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