Snow Crash

Debut of 42 security project.

Sn❄w-crash header

Description

Snow-Crash is a security related CTF (capture the flag) type project where a Linux (x64 ubuntu) ISO is given and we have to find the flags.

There are 14 levels to complete, where from Level00 to Level09 are mandatory and from Level10 to LEVEL14 are considered as bonuses.

This project gives us a really general idea of security issues of different fields, such as

• Badly written code with no protection

• Unprotected network communication

• Badly managed automated jobs in the machines

Finding the flags and validating them

In this project there are 2 kind of user accounts in the system.

• levelXX (The XX represents a number e.g level00, level01, level11)

• flagXX (The XX represents a number e.g flag00, flag01, flag11)

Generally you will have to find the password to log into the account flagXX that corresponds to the current levelXX. So if we are in level03 we have to find the password to login to the account flag03

Once we obtain the password, we login as flagXX and call getflag program. And it will tell us the flag for that level. This flag is also the password to the next level. So if we found the flag of level03 then we can use that flag to login to the account level04

Here is how it would look like

## Do whatever need to be done to get the password for the flag03 account
level03@SnowCrash:~$ su flag03
password

flag03@SnowCrash:~$ getflag
Check flag.Here is your token : XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

flag03@SnowCrash:~$ su level04
password # (the password is the flag you got from flag03 account) 

You won't have to log into the account flagXX to get the flag. Sometime the flag is found directly in levelXX account and sometime you won't even have to call the program getflag

The getflag binary is found in /bin/ path

Resources

• The subject in English and in French

• The Linux ISO file

• The video for this project in intra and in RAW format (for which no login is required)

Get started with the project

To start the project just open the ISO in a virtual machine such as VMware or Virtual Box (or whatever you want)

If you are using Virtual Box set your network option to bridge

according to the 42 subject you can login using ssh on port 4242 so you can use the following command to connect to your virtual machine:

## Verify your ip address in the virtual machine.
## It is shown when you boot the machine.
ssh level00@192.168.1.92 -p 4242

In total there are 15 levels starting from Level 0 to level 14

You MUST finish level 0 to 9 to pass the mandatory part and then do 10 to 14 as bonuses.

Project structure for submission

The repository is expected to contain one directory for each level where directory names are levelXX where XX represents the number of level. So for the first 4 levels it will look like following :

$> ls -al
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 3 XX:XX level00
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 3 XX:XX level01
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 3 XX:XX level02
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 3 XX:XX level03

in each directory you should put a file named flag that will contain your write-up (explain the process to obtain the flag)

You can also have a directory called Ressources where you will put all files (or anything) necessary to prove your process to obtain the flag.

Anything put inside Ressources directory will have to be explained during the correction.

So with the flag file and the Resources directory your directory tree might look as follows:

$> ls -alR level00
level00:
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Dec 3 15:22 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Dec 3 15:20 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5 Dec 3 15:22 flag
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 3 15:22 Ressources