Trash Chain
Reverse engineering a hash function
Problem
It seems that my problems with hashing just keep multiplying...
nc umbccd.io 3100
Author: RJ
Solution
The challenge is as follows:
Welcome to TrashChain! In this challenge, you will enter two sequences of integers which are used to compute two hashes. If the two hashes match, you get the flag! Restrictions:
Integers must be greater than 1.
Chain 2 must be at least 3 integers longer than chain 1
All integers in chain 1 must be less than the smallest element in chain 2
Type "done" when you are finished inputting numbers for each chain.
Hash function:
def H(val, prev_hash, hash_num):
return (prev_hash * pow(val + hash_num, B, A) % A)
Computing hashes:
hashes = []
for chain_num in range(len(chains)):
cur_hash = 1
for i, val in enumerate(chains[chain_num]):
cur_hash = H(val, cur_hash, i+1)
hashes.append(cur_hash)
Leverage the fact that . If we simply pass in A as the input, the hash will be 0, and we can make the two hashes collide by forcing them both to be 0.
Since chain 2 must be 3 numbers longer than chain 1, we can simply use , where n is any positive integer.
Testing our theory:

Of course, this works on the actual server as well.

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