picoCTF General Skills Guide

HashingJobApp

Name: HashingJobApp
Description: If you want to hash with the best, beat this test! nc saturn.picoctf.net 57159
Author: LT 'syreal' Jones
Tags: Easy, General Skills, Beginner picoMini 2022, hashing, nc, shell, Python
Challenge from: Beginner picoMini 2022
Hints:
1. You can use a commandline tool or web app to hash text
2. Press Ctrl and c on your keyboard to close your connection and return to the command prompt.

Theory

According to the description, to get the flag we're probably going to hash some thing they give us, it's gonna be pretty easy if we use python, because we can use hashlib to encode a string to something like MD5:

import hashlib

print(hashlib.md5("something".encode()).hexdigest())

Solution

We just need to enter the NetCat, and enter whatever they give us to hash and then submit it:

shukularuni-picoctf@webshell:~$ nc saturn.picoctf.net 57159
Please md5 hash the text between quotes, excluding the quotes: 'Albert Einstein'

    >>> print(hashlib.md5("Albert Einstein".encode()).hexdigest())
    7560afa1f46d5e5fefe4ad93e42a293d

Answer: 
7560afa1f46d5e5fefe4ad93e42a293d

Correct.
Please md5 hash the text between quotes, excluding the quotes: 'having an operation'

    >>> print(hashlib.md5("having an operation".encode()).hexdigest())
    e8911c168f3f28c385ac7f3e4d0682cc

Answer: 
e8911c168f3f28c385ac7f3e4d0682cc

Correct.
Please md5 hash the text between quotes, excluding the quotes: 'a dozen red roses'

    >>> print(hashlib.md5("a dozen red roses".encode()).hexdigest())
    53a09ce3db9c4d42c862dc0e29d777e5

Answer: 
53a09ce3db9c4d42c862dc0e29d777e5

Correct.
picoCTF{4ppl1c4710n_r3c31v3d_674c1de2}

There we go! That's the flag.

I rated this level as "good"! :3