Rating: 4.0

The task has a quite meaningless description: "I love reversing!" and an archive with a binary file attached.

Opening the fine in IDA Pro after some basic analysis we can see, that user is requested to input a string (let's call it `input`), which is then transformed in some way (via `transform_input`) and then compared with another string (`target_string`), that is constructed from some embedded data by XOR-ing each byte with some mysterious value called ``magic`. Here is some decompiled code from IDA with some comments and formatting:

```c
// Input flag
printf("flag > ");
__isoc99_scanf("%s", input);

// Transform flag
input_len = strlen(input);
transform_input(input, input_len, (void **)&transformed_input);

// Calculate a reference value for transformed flag
sub_15D8(1886873447);
x = a4;
v8 = (int)pow(a4, 2.0);
y = *(double *)&qword_4028 * *(double *)&qword_4020;
magic = (int)fmod((double)v8, *(double *)&qword_4028 * *(double *)&qword_4020);
for ( i = 0; i <= 0x2B; ++i )
target_string[i] ^= magic;

// Compare transformed flag with its reference value and print result
if ( !strcmp(transformed_input, target_string) )
puts("congrats!");
else
puts("try again :)");
```

Looking deeper into `transform_input` function we can find out some interesting things. It uses some `alphabet` constant to perform a transformation:
```c
...
HIBYTE(v23) = v22 & 0x3F;
(*transformed_input)[v14] = alphabet[(unsigned __int8)v21 >> 2];
...
```

This alphabet looks as follows: `ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/`. Very similar to BASE64 alphabet, isn't it? Let's assume, that `transform_input` performs a BASE64 encoding.

So, `target_string` probably contains a BASE64 encoded flag. Let's try to leak this value. Consider the call of `puts` function:

```assembly
48 8D 3D F1 06 00 00 lea rdi, s ; "congrats!"
E8 A1 F7 FF FF call _puts
```

As we can see, address of a string that will be printed is loaded into `rdi` register and then `puts` function is called. Let's try to load into `rdi` the `target_string` and call `puts` by patching the binary. Here is a bit wider code snippet from the binary:
```assembly
48 8D 35 D9 26 00 00 lea rsi, target_string ; "sZ\\xvUH%vUzzp" ; (1)
48 89 C7 mov rdi, rax ; transformed_input
E8 11 F8 FF FF call _strcmp
85 C0 test eax, eax
75 0E jnz short loc_1981
48 8D 3D F1 06 00 00 lea rdi, s ; "congrats!"
E8 A1 F7 FF FF call _puts ; (2)
EB 0C jmp short loc_198D
; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

loc_1981: ; CODE XREF: main+149↑j
48 8D 3D ED 06 00 00 lea rdi, aTryAgain ; "try again :)"
E8 93 F7 FF FF call _puts ; (2)
```

We are interested in the following lines: (1) here the address of `target_string` is loaded into `rsi` register, and here (2) the function `puts` is called. The first line must be changed to load the address of `target_string` into `rdi` instead of `rsi`, and there must not be any other instructions, that affect this register between the modified line and the closest `puts` call.

First of all let's change the register the address of `target_string` is loaded in. This can be done just by replacing the third byte of the instruction with the value of `0x3D`. We got the following line of code:
```assembly
48 8D 3D D9 26 00 00 lea rdi, target_string ; "sZ\\xvUH%vUzzp"
```

But what shall we do with the rest of instructions up to the closest call of `puts`? Well, just set these bytes to `0x90`, i.e. `nop` instruction. I got the following code:

```assembly
48 8D 3D D9 26 00 00 lea rdi, target_string ; "sZ\\xvUH%vUzzp"
90 nop
90 nop ; transformed_input
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
85 C0 test eax, eax
75 0E jnz short loc_1981
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
E8 A1 F7 FF FF call _puts
EB 0C jmp short loc_198D
; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

loc_1981: ; CODE XREF: main+149↑j
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
90 nop
E8 93 F7 FF FF call _puts
```

Now we need to save patched binary and just run it:

```bash
┌──(z㉿z)-[~/reverse]
└─$ ./ezrev
flag > test
aHNjdGZ7dGhhbmtzX2Zvcl9lbmpveWluZ19oc2N0ZiF9
```

We got a string, let's decode it from BASE64 to obtain a flag:

```bash
┌──(z㉿z)-[~/reverse]
└─$ echo aHNjdGZ7dGhhbmtzX2Zvcl9lbmpveWluZ19oc2N0ZiF9 | base64 -d 1 ⨯
hsctf{thanks_for_enjoying_hsctf!}
```