Hack This Site: Javascript Mission – Level 7

Hell world, welcome to haxez. We have done it, we have made it to the Javascript 7 mission or the last Javascript mission on Hack This Site. After all those other missions I feel like I’m a scripting savant. Ok maybe not, but progress is progress. Furthermore, once we have completed this mission, we can move on to other more exciting missions. This mission is a lot like one of the previous missions that we did. However, instead of the password being encoded or obfuscated, this time the whole script is obfuscated.

Javascript 7 Mission description
JS Obfuscation FTW

Javascript 7 Introduction

Navigating to the mission we can see a password input form. There isn’t much more information than that other than the title and a thank you message to the creator. If we submit test data to the password input form then we will get an incorrect error message. In order to see what’s going on, we need to view the page source of the application.

Javascript 7 Password Submission Form
Password Submission Form

The Javascript

As you can see from the image below, the script appears to be garbled data. It’s all X’s followed by two-digit numbers. We could attempt to decode it online but there is a far easier solution. All we need to do is to right-click the Check Password button and inspect the functionality behind that.

Obfuscated Javascript
Obfuscated Javascript

The Button Javascript

As you can see from the screenshot below, inspecting the button shows us the Javascript that is powering it. The Javascript is checking the value of user-submitted value ‘pass‘ to see whether it matches the value ‘j00w1n‘. If the values match then we get an alert saying “You WIN!”. If it doesn’t match then we get a message saying “WRONG! Try Again”.

The Button — Javascript
The Button — Javascript

The Javascript 7 Solution

Therefore, in order to complete this mission and to complete the Javascript series. All you need to do is submit the value ‘j00w1n‘ to the password form. As you can see from the image below, we get the alert box that tells us that we have successfully completed the mission.

The Solution
The Solution

Alernative Method

I’m sure the developers didn’t intend for this mission to be this easy. I fully believe that they wanted us to deobfuscate the code. So for that reason, the screenshot below shows me deobfuscating the code using the GCHQ tool CyberChef. As you can see from the screenshot, the output shows the button value with the password.

CyberChef
CyberChef

Hack This Site: Javascript Mission – Level 6

Hello world, welcome to haxez where today we’re going to solve Javascript Mission 6 on Hack This Site. This challenge isn’t too difficult provided you pay attention to the details. The mission takes the script from a previous mission and attempts to distract you with it. However, hidden on another page of the application is the correct script that is being used to authenticate.

Javascript 6 go go away .js
go go away .js

The Javascript 6 Mission

Navigating to the mission we see the expected password submission form. However, instead of Faith, this time we have a message saying that Fiftysixer has decided to try creating some Javascript. It explains that he forgot to remove the previous code. This has made the new code more confusing but apparently, Fiftysixer likes it that way. We can submit test data to the form but we get an incorrect error message.

The Password Form
The Password Form

The Javascript

If we view the Javascript we can see that it looks a lot like the script we had for a previous mission. This script tried to trick us by comparing a variable with a string rather than assigning the string to the variable. The solution to that mission was ‘moo'. However, if we submit ‘moo‘ to the password form, we still get an incorrect error message. Notably, there is a link to what appears to be another Javascript file called checkpass.js. Furthermore, the name suggests that it may have something to do with the password checking functionality.

The Javascript
The Javascript

The Real Javascript

If we navigate to the script in the URL we can see that it does appear to be the correct script for checking the password. As you can see from the image below, the javascript is declaring three variables and assigning them values.

dairycow="moo";
moo = "pwns";
rawr = "moo";

I’m not too familiar with Javascript syntax but I wonder whether the lack of spaces in the declaration of ‘dairycow‘ is significant in any way. After the variable declaration, we have a function to check the password. It states that if the value submitted by the user is the same as the value of ‘rawr‘ and ‘moo‘ then we win. If not then we lose. It is important to note that there are also speech marks between ‘rawr‘ and ‘moo‘ so we need to ensure that we have a space in our submission.

The Real Javascript
The Real Javascript

The Javascript 6 Solution

So that’s all we need to do to solve the mission. Submit ‘moo pwns‘ as the password and you should complete the mission. Congratulations.

How did you do that
How did you do that

Hack This Site: Javascript Mission – Level 5

Hello World, welcome to haxez where today we will be looking at the Javascript Mission 5 on Hack This Site. This mission was a lot of fun and even gave me an excuse to use the GCHQ CyberChef tool to deobfuscate some encoded text. The mission is fairly simple provided you know what to do with the data that you find.

Javascript 5 Escape
Escape

The Javascript 5 Mission

Upon navigating to the mission we are greeted with a password input form and some text asking if Faith spelled Runescape wrong. This comes into play a bit later as it is referencing a Javascript function that is used to encode or decode text. We could input some text into the password form and submit it but without the correct text, we will get an error message to notify us that the password is wrong.

The Mission
The Mission

The Javascript 5

However, If we inspect the password form or view the page source we can see the Javascript. Furthermore, the first part of the script is declaring a variable named ‘moo‘ and says that it is equal to unescape. The ‘unescape()‘ function computes a new string in which hexadecimal escape sequences are replaced with the character that it represents. In addition to the declaration of the ‘moo‘ variable and the ‘unescape’ function we have the following encoded string ‘%69%6C%6F%76%65%6D%6F%6F‘.

The Javascript
The Javascript

Javascript Deobfuscation

In order to decode the string, we can use our favorite Government developed decoding tool, CyberChef. Surprisingly, CyberChef works really well considering it came from the public sector (please don’t arrest me). As can be seen from the image below, the interface is simple. You choose a recipe, then paste in your encoded text, and then it works its magic and decodes it for you. It even has a magic recipe that will automatically detect what you’re inputting. It really is a great application.

CyberChef
CyberChef

The Solution

As shown above, the decoded text turns out to be ‘ilovemoo‘. If you submit that to the password form then you should complete the mission.

ilovemoo
ilovemoo

Congratulations you have now completed Javascript mission 5.

Congratulations
Congratulations

Hack This Site: Javascript Mission – Level 4

Hello world, welcome to haxez where today we will be solving Hack This Site Javascript Mission 4. This mission is a little deceptive due to the way that the Javascript is written. To put it another way, this mission intentionally tries to trick you into thinking the value of a variable is something else. However, our keen attention to detail is enough to complete the mission.

Javascript 4
Javascript 4

The Mission

The mission is called Var which we can deduce means we’re going to be working with variables again. As can be seen from the image below, the message reads “Faith is trying to trick you… she knows that you’re tired after all the math works”. To sum up, Faith is going to going to attempt some shinanigans to prevent us from completing this mission. We can test the form with random data to see what happens but as expected, we just get an alert informing us that it is incorrect.

The Mission
The Mission

The Javascript 4

If we inspect the page we can see the script that is powering the functionality. This is where the first deception comes in. If you view the page source instead of inspecting the element, you may not notice that the first variable is being set. The image below shows that the first variable is being set on the far right. It’s probably a bit to small to see though.

Hidden Moo
Hidden Moo

However, if we inspect the script you will see that at the very start of the script, we can see that the value ‘moo‘ is being assigned to the variable ‘RawrRawr‘. Next, we can see that a function called ‘x‘ is being created where the value of ‘hack_this_site‘ is being added to the variable ‘+RawrRawr+‘. Then again, perhaps it isn’t. If we look at how the ‘moo‘ is being assigned to ‘RawrRawr‘ we only see one equal sign. In javascript, a double equals sign acts as an operator to compare two values so all that’s happening here is that ‘hack_this_site‘ is being compared to ‘RawrRawr‘.

The Javascript
The Javascript

The Solution

The value of ‘RawrRawr‘ is still moo, let’s see what the script does next. The script has an if statement that compares ‘x‘ to an empty value between two speech marks plus the value of ‘RawrRawr‘. So in essence, the script is checking the value of ‘x‘ against nothing plus ‘moo‘ as ‘moo‘ was set earlier. Therefore, the password to complete the mission should be moo. Input that in to the box and click submit to score.

The Solution
The Solution

Hack This Site: Javascript Mission – Level 3

Hello world, welcome to HaXeZ where today we’re going to be solving the Javascript 3 mission on Hack This Site. Judge me how you will but I have to admit that I learned a lot from this challenge. My time at school was less than ideal so I didn’t go very often. Unfortunately, this meant I missed out on a lot of important subjects including mathematics. I hadn’t even heard of BODMAS until today and I’m 35. I have no idea how I’ve made it this far in computing without knowing it. This challenge is fairly simple provided you know how variables work and know maths.

Javascript 3 Math Time
Math Time

The Javascript 3

Looking at the code below we can see that we need to submit a password that is the same length as the value of the variable ‘moo‘. We know this because of the if statement that requires ‘x.length == moo‘ for us to get the alert that we have won the mission. In order to get the value of ‘moo‘, we need to perform some calculations to work out the value.

The Javascript 3
The Javascript

The Mathamatics

Ok, let’s break down the maths.

The value of ‘foo‘ is 47 Because of the BODMAS calculation 6 * 7 + 5.
The value of ‘bar‘ is 7 Because it’s the Modulus remainder of 47 divided by 8
Therefore, the value of ‘moo‘ is 14 because the value of ‘bar‘ is 7 and the value of ‘moo‘ is ‘bar‘ * 2.

We can discard the value of ‘rar‘ because ‘rar‘ is not used anywhere during the calculation. Therefore, we are left with the value 14. We know that the password submission form requires our input to be the same length as ‘moo‘. In essence, we should be able to submit any 14 characters to complete the mission.

The Mathematics
The Mathematics

Congratulations

After submitting 14 characters to the password submission form, you should complete the challenge. That’s all there is to it. However, if you don’t know about BODMAS, which I didn’t, and if you didn’t know that a percentage sign in programming means Modulo or remainder then it could be difficult.

Congratulations
Congratulations

Come back next time for Javascript 4.

Hack This Site: Javascript Mission – Level 2

Hello World, welcome to haxez where today we’re looking at Hack This Site Javascript Mission 2. For this mission, we only need to change a setting within our browser or install a plugin. As a result, we disable Javascript which allows us to complete the mission. As can be seen from the image below, the mission is called Disabled Javascript and supposedly has a script that redirects to log out hackers.

Javascript 2 Disable Javascript
Disable Javascript

Javascript 2 Scripting Enabled

As a result, navigating to the mission will prompt an error message saying we need to try again because we didn’t disable Javascript. To complete this mission, we need to disable the script doesn’t run and we don’t get “logged out”.

Try Again
Try Again

Disabling Javascript

In order to disable the script, we can install a browser plugin or we can head to our browser settings. I’m using Firefox so the setting we need is in 'about:config'. Head to ‘about:config‘ in your browser and search for Javascript. You should see an enabled option with the value set to true. Click the little arrow icons and change the value to false. There are plenty of guides out there for other browsers or you can search the browsers store for a plugin that disables it.

Disabling Javascript
Disabling Javascript

Scripting Disabled

Now that it’s disabled, we can head back to the mission and click the ‘here’ hyperlink to take the mission. This time you shouldn’t see an error. You should see another link that says “Click here to win”. Click that link and you should then see the image below congratulating you on completing the challenge.

Scripting Disabled
Scripting Disabled

Conclusions

There isn’t much to say about this one honestly. It’s a good mission to teach the user how to disable and enable client-side scripting in your browser. Client-side scripting is responsible for a number of attacks like Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and when combined with other vulnerabilities can cause a lot of problems. Anyway, I’ve passed this post out as much as possible but there isn’t much more I can say so… thanks for reading.

Hack This Site: Javascript Mission – Level 1

Introduction

Hello world, welcome to haxez, where we will be working out Javascript Mission Level 1 on Hack This Site. We’ve just completed the realistic missions and I thought it was time to take a break and do something a little less intense. So without further ado, let’s get started. Upon navigating to the mission, we get a title called the Idiot Test (very appropriate for me I assure you). Based on the information we have, it sounds like Faith with a small f (bug report submitted) is learning Javascript. Let’s go and take a look at it.

Javascript 1 Idiot Test
Idiot Test

Testing The Javascript 1

When we follow the link to the mission, we’re greeted with a title of Javascript Mission 1 and a password submission form. Furthermore, if we input data into the form (incorrect data), we get a javascript alert window pop up telling us we fail. Ordinarily, Javascript is a client-side language (runs un the user’s browser), we can’t intercept this request and brute force it. That also means we can view the script and see what it’s doing.

Javascript 1 You fail
You fail

Analyzing The Javascript

As shown below, In order to find out what the script is doing, we need to view the page source and locate the code. Overall, the quickest way to do this is to right-click inside the password form and click inspect. As can be seen, that should take you directly to the code powering the form. As illustrated in the image below, the Javascript code is checking if the variable ‘x‘ is equal to cookies. If the value is equal to cookies then an alert box will pop up saying “win”. If the value is not equal to cookies then we get an alert box pop up saying “fail”.

Page Source
Page Source

Bribing With Cookies

In order to pass this mission, all we need to do is submit the value cookies into the password submission form. Yes, it really is that simple and could be completed without even understanding the code. So, input the word cookies in to the password submission form and click submit.

Cookies
Cookies

As promised, upon doing so you will receive a pop-up box claiming that you win.

You Win
You Win

Well thats it.