• Guess challenge

• The most complicated part about solving the challenge was the fact that there was a hidden unknown address contract deployed at a remote server that had to return the exact byte code size to enable the winning magic number.

• Knowing the contract bytecode, deployer address, and deterministic nature of the blockchains, my first take was to impersonate the deployer address and account nonce to generate a local deployment of the contract. Obviously, the author offuscated the bytecode to avoid this possible solution.

• My second idea? brute force (fuzzing).
  I will go over my detailed approach to finding this mysterious address with the help of a constrained fuzzing function that called ~2000 possible addresses on the network until it found the winning one.

• Details

• Contracts:

  • A: single function contract

  • MyToken: simple ERC20 token

  • GuessGame: Guess 4 random values for guessGame() function based on the following init code:

contract GuessGame {
    uint256 private immutable random01;
    uint256 private immutable random02;
    uint256 private immutable random03;
    A private  immutable random04;
    MyToken private immutable mytoken;

    constructor(A _a) {
        mytoken = new MyToken();

        random01 = uint160(msg.sender);
        random02 = uint256(keccak256(address(new A()).code));
        random03 = block.timestamp;
        random04 = _a; 
        pureFunc();
    }

    // pureFunc() runs in constructor memory context
    function pureFunc() pure internal {
        assembly{
            mstore(0x80,1)  // offset 128, sets random01 to 1
            mstore(0xa0,2) //  offset 160, sets random02 to 2
            mstore(0xc0,32) // offset 192, sets random03 to 32
        }
    }
    ...

• After constructor

  • random01: 1

  • random02: 2

  • random03: 32

  • random04: A contract instance

Main game function:

    function guess(uint256 _random01, uint256 _random02, uint256 _random03, uint256 _random04) external payable returns(bool){

        if(msg.value > 100 ether){
            // 100 eth! you are VIP!
        }else{
            uint256[] memory arr;
            uint256 money = msg.value;
            assembly{
                mstore(_random01, money)
            }
            require(random01 == arr.length,"wrong number01");
        }

        uint256 y = ( uint160(address(msg.sender)) + random01 + random02 + random03 + _random02) & 0xff;
        require(random02 == y,"wrong number02");

        require(uint160(_random03) < uint160(0x0000000000fFff8545DcFcb03fCB875F56bedDc4));
        (,bytes memory data) = address(uint160(_random03)).staticcall("Fallbacker()");
        require(random03 == data.length,"wrong number03");

        require(random04.number() == _random04, "wrong number04");

        mytoken.transfer(msg.sender,100);
        payable(msg.sender).transfer(address(this).balance);
        return true;
    }

• Guessing

  • param _random01:

    • Constraint require(random01 == arr.length,"wrong number01");

    • random01 = '0x60 or 96 because of Memory reserved spaces

    • 

  • param _random02:

    • constraint:

        uint256 y = ( uint160(address(msg.sender)) + random01 + random02 + random03 + _random02) & 0xff;

• & 0xff: masks the sum result and return the last 8 bits in binary.

• I set random02 value to 0, comment out the masking & 0xff and print the y value, the result was a big int _1 (long number)

• I converted that number big int _1 to binary representation using this chrome extension and modified the binary to make the last 8 bits represent the number 2 or 00000010, becasue I knew from constructor that random02 = 2

• I converted the modified binary to back to decimal to get another big number big int _2, then I got the difference between both big integersbig int _1 & big int _2 and in decimals and got the correct number to set, in my case _random02 = 121.

  • param _random03:

• constraints:

        require(uint160(_random03) < uint160(0x0000000000fFff8545DcFcb03fCB875F56bedDc4));

        (,bytes memory data) = address(uint160(_random03)).staticcall("Fallbacker()");

        require(random03 == data.length,"wrong number03");

• At this point I know that random03 = 32 so I used a single function helper contract that returns 32

• Then some magic foundry fuzz to solve

            try helperContract.ctf(_random03)returns(uint256 dataSize){
                vm.assume(dataSize >= 32);
            }catch { console.log("Fuzzing..."); }

• Ironically the right number was 3 so _random03 = 3

  • param _random04 was always 10

• I used cast to get address at stora slot 1 of SetUp contract:

cast storage <metatrust deployed address> 1

contract SetUp {
    A public a ;
    GuessGame public guessGame;

    constructor() payable {
        a = new A();
        guessGame = new GuessGame(a);
    }

    function isSolved() public view returns(bool) {
        return guessGame.isSolved();
    }
}

• Finally, I sent my guessGame() numbers with cast encoding the function name and parameters.

• I used AI assistant phind.com to find in a faster way the foundry cast commands to query remote contracts from the command line.

Conclusion

Fuzzing can be a useful approach to breaking protocol invariants, especially (like in this case) if we know beforehand the logical statements that need to hold for the protocol to maintain its functional expectations.