CY 2550 - Command Line CTF

CY 2550 - Foundations of Cybersecurity

Project: Command Line Capture the Flag

This project is due at 11:59pm on Friday, April 2, 2021.

Description and Deliverables

In this project, you will gain hands on experience leveraging exploits to make a program do unexpected things that were not intended by the programmer. The assignment is structured as a Capture The Flag (CTF), which is a common format in cybersecurity competitions. You will be given access to a vulnerable program, and your task is to locate six flags hidden in the program and its surrounding files. You are required to find five flags; the sixth flag is considerably more challenging, and is worth bonus points.

To receive full credit for this project, you will turn in a single file:

A file named project7/flags.txt that contains the flags that you will capture from the target program.

The exact format of this deliverable is described in detail below.

Getting Started with Expense Management

Happy Funtime Plastic Co, Inc. uses a piece of software developed in-house for tracking expenses made by employees. This software is run on the command line, and allows users to add expenses (with a description and an amount), view their saved expenses, and delete expenses that were entered incorrectly. The program uses a SQLite3 database to store expenses. The command line syntax of the program is as follows:

/home/accounting$ ./expense 
This program allows users to track their expenses. It has commands for adding, viewing, and deleting
expenses. Administrators may add, view, or delete expenses for any user. The program also keeps a log
of all changes to facilitate offline auditing.

Usage: ./expense [--admin] <--command> [arguments]
  Commands:
    --help                           Displays this message
    --add <Description> <Amount>     Adds an expense for the current user
    --list                           Lists all expenses for the current user
    --del <ID>                       Deletes the current user's expense with the given ID

Additional commands are available to administrators. See the developer docs for more information.

The basic commands available to users are --add, --list, and --del. There are other commands and options available to system administrators; this additional functionality is accessed by passing the --admin option to the program. However, access to admin functionality is password protected.

As security auditors, you have been given access to the expense program in a secure environment for testing. To access the expense program, SSH into 34.202.237.143. For example:

$ ssh <username>@...

where your <username> and password to access this system will be emailed to you.

The expense program is available in the /home/accounting directory on 34.202.237.143.

The expense program is written in C. The (slightly redacted) source code for the program is available here.

Identifying Flags

Your goal is to locate the six flags hidden in the expense program and it's surrounding files. You are required to find at least five flags; the sixth flag is a bonus. All flags are located somewhere within the the /home/accounting directory; there is no need to search other locations in the file system. All flags follow the following format:

SECRET_FLAG_<10 characters of random uppercase>

For example, a secret flag might look like this:

SECRET_FLAG_PLFUDSTGXK

The secret flags can be anywhere within the /home/accounting directory: inside the expense program, inside databases, inside files, etc. It is 100% feasible to find all six flags; none have been hidden in such a way that it requires wizard-level exploitation skills, or raw amounts of brute force, to locate.

Rules

To make this assignment fun for everyone, we ask that students obey some basic rules of decorum.

As you progress through this assignment, you will achieve various levels of elevated privilege. This will give you the ability to take destructive actions. We ask that you exercise restraint and not destroy any data or files. Please leave things as you found them ;)
Do not denial of service the server. Examples of denial of service attacks include but are not limited to: intentionally running large numbers of processes to control CPU and memory resources; intentionally filling the disk to capacity; and flooding the server with network traffic.
Do not attack your classmates. This includes attempting to crack their passwords, read or alter files in their home directory, or kill their processes.

WARNING: Follow the Rules!

Any student that fails to follow these rules, i.e., intentionally attempts to make mischief, will receive a zero on the assignment. That said, we understand that mistakes happen! If you accidentally make changes to project files that you believe may hinder others' abilities to complete the assignment, let us know immediately and we will repair the situation.

If you so desire, attacking the operating system is considered within bounds. If you achieve root, getting all the flags should be trivial. If you do choose to attack the OS, all we ask is that you do not take destructive actions that (1) leave the server in an unusable state; (2) harm your classmates or their files; or (3) generally prevent other students from completing the assignment.

Exploitation Tips

Your user account does not have permissions to read all of the files in the /home/accounting directory. However, the expense program has several vulnerabilities that will allow you to learn these secret flags.

Locating all six flags will require you to examine the C source code of the expense program, carefully investigate the program's command line behavior, and investigate the file system around the expense program. Several of the exploits necessary to find the flags are related to topics we discussed in class. You can recover the first five flags using inspection tools and SQL injection attacks, but these attacks will require you to think creatively. To recover the 6th flag for extra credit, in addition to creativity, you may need to carefully construct a special string ;)

The source code for the expense program is relatively simple, and well documented. However, online C language tutorials may be useful for students who have never seen code in the language before. If you have questions about the C program and its syntax or meaning of any line of code, and you cannot find answers online, feel free to post questions on the Piazza forum.

The expense program makes use of a SQLite3 database. Many online resources exist that describe SQL query syntax in general, and SQLite3-specific queries in particular.

Unfortunately, the source code for the expense program that we provide has been redacted. Thus, you may need to employ binary analysis tools that allow you to inspect and disassemble the contents of compiled programs. Tools like hexdump, strings, and objdump may come in handy; the man pages for these programs offer help about their capabilities and syntax. A debugger like gdb may be useful for more advanced exploits. As a starting point, take a look at the authenticate() and open_db functions in the code.

Common programming tools like Python 3, gcc, g++, nasm, and make are available on the server. If there are additional tools available via apt that you would like installed, send an email or private Piazza message to the course staff.

File Format for flags.txt

To receive full credit on this assignment, you must turn in a single (ASCII formatted with Unix-style line breaks) text file named flags.txt that contains the flags that you have recovered.

You should create a file named flags.txt that contains your captured flags. Each flag should be on its own line. For example, your flags.txt file might look like the following:

SECRET_FLAG_AAAFLAG1AA
SECRET_FLAG_BBBFLAG2BB
SECRET_FLAG_CCCFLAG3CC
SECRET_FLAG_DDDFLAG4DD
SECRET_FLAG_EEEFLAG5EE
SECRET_FLAG_FFFFLAG6FF

Your file should contain at least five flags.

Submitting Your Project

To submit your project, do the following:

Create a directory ~/cy2550/project7 in the folder corresponding to your git repository.
Copy your flags.txt file to the ~/cy2550/project7 folder.
Add these files to your repository, commit them, and push the committed files to Github.
Submit your repository to Gradescope.

Grading

This project is worth 10% of your final grade, broken down as follows (out of 100):

20 points each per flag (five flags)
20 bonus points for the sixth flag

Points can be lost for turning in files in incorrect formats (e.g. not UNIX-line break ASCII), failing to follow specified formatting and naming conventions, or encrypting/signing your file using the wrong keys.

Tips

CTF projects are puzzles: they're best when students are allowed to figure things out for themselves. Thus, we're reluctant to post tips openly that would give away key aspects of the game. That said, if you feel stuck, or like you don't know where to begin, that is okay! Please talk to the professor or the TAs privately, either on Piazza, email, or office hours, and we will be happy to help you get started. We want everyone to enjoy the CTF, so if you feel like you're not making progress and the project is giving you grief, come talk to us!

We will give one hint to get you started: CTFs are sometimes like escape rooms. The solution to one puzzle is often the key that unlocks the next puzzle. Happy hunting!