CTF Cryptography

Quick reference for crypto CTF challenges. Each technique has a one-liner here; see supporting files for full details with code.

Additional Resources

• classic-ciphers.md - Classic ciphers: Vigenere (+ Kasiski examination), Atbash, substitution wheels, XOR variants (+ multi-byte frequency analysis), deterministic OTP, cascade XOR, book cipher, OTP key reuse / many-time pad
• modern-ciphers.md - Modern cipher attacks: AES (CFB-8, ECB leakage), CBC-MAC/OFB-MAC, padding oracle, S-box collisions, GF(2) elimination, LCG partial output recovery
• rsa-attacks.md - RSA attacks: small e (cube root), common modulus, Wiener's, Pollard's p-1, Hastad's broadcast, Fermat/consecutive primes, multi-prime, restricted-digit, Coppersmith structured primes, Manger oracle, polynomial hash, RSA p=q validation bypass, cube root CRT gcd(e,phi)>1, factoring from phi(n) multiple
• ecc-attacks.md - ECC attacks: small subgroup, invalid curve, Smart's attack (anomalous, with Sage code), fault injection, clock group DLP, Pohlig-Hellman, ECDSA nonce reuse, Ed25519 torsion side channel
• zkp-and-advanced.md - ZKP/graph 3-coloring, Z3 solver guide, garbled circuits, Shamir SSS, bigram constraint solving, race conditions, Groth16 broken setup, DV-SNARG forgery, KZG pairing oracle for permutation recovery
• prng.md - PRNG attacks (MT19937, LCG, GF(2) matrix PRNG, V8 XorShift128+ Math.random state recovery via Z3, middle-square, deterministic RNG hill climbing, random-mode oracle, time-based seeds, password cracking, logistic map chaotic PRNG)
• historical.md - Historical ciphers (Lorenz SZ40/42, book cipher implementation)
• advanced-math.md - Advanced mathematical attacks (isogenies, Pohlig-Hellman, LLL, Coppersmith, quaternion RSA, GF(2)[x] CRT, S-box collision code, LWE lattice CVP attack, affine cipher over non-prime modulus)
• exotic-crypto.md - Exotic algebraic structures (braid group DH / Alexander polynomial, monotone function inversion, tropical semiring residuation)

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Classic Ciphers

• Caesar: Frequency analysis or brute force 26 keys
• Vigenere: Known plaintext attack with flag format prefix; derive key from (ct - pt) mod 26. Kasiski examination for unknown key length (GCD of repeated sequence distances)
• Atbash: A<->Z substitution; look for "Abashed" hints in challenge name
• Substitution wheel: Brute force all rotations of inner/outer alphabet mapping
• Multi-byte XOR: Split ciphertext by key position, frequency-analyze each column independently; score by English letter frequency (space = 0x20)
• Cascade XOR: Brute force first byte (256 attempts), rest follows deterministically
• XOR rotation (power-of-2): Even/odd bits never mix; only 4 candidate states
• Weak XOR verification: Single-byte XOR check has 1/256 pass rate; brute force with enough budget
• Deterministic OTP: Known-plaintext XOR to recover keystream; match load-balanced backends
• OTP key reuse (many-time pad): C1 XOR C2 XOR known_P = unknown_P; crib dragging when no plaintext known

See classic-ciphers.md for full code examples.

Modern Cipher Attacks

• AES-ECB: Block shuffling, byte-at-a-time oracle; image ECB preserves visual patterns
• AES-CBC: Bit flipping to change plaintext; padding oracle for decryption without key
• AES-CFB-8: Static IV with 8-bit feedback allows state reconstruction after 16 known bytes
• CBC-MAC/OFB-MAC: XOR keystream for signature forgery: new_sig = old_sig XOR block_diff
• S-box collisions: Non-permutation S-box (len(set(sbox)) < 256) enables 4,097-query key recovery
• GF(2) elimination: Linear hash functions (XOR + rotations) solved via Gaussian elimination over GF(2)
• Padding oracle: Byte-by-byte decryption by modifying previous block and testing padding validity

See modern-ciphers.md for full code examples.

RSA Attacks

• Small e with small message: Take eth root
• Common modulus: Extended GCD attack
• Wiener's attack: Small d
• Fermat factorization: p and q close together
• Pollard's p-1: Smooth p-1
• Hastad's broadcast: Same message, multiple e=3 encryptions
• Consecutive primes: q = next_prime(p); find first prime below sqrt(N)
• Multi-prime: Factor N with sympy; compute phi from all factors
• Restricted-digit primes: Digit-by-digit factoring from LSB with modular pruning
• Coppersmith structured primes: Partially known prime; f.small_roots() in SageMath
• Manger oracle (simplified): Phase 1 doubling + phase 2 binary search; ~128 queries for 64-bit key
• Manger on RSA-OAEP (timing): Python or short-circuit skips expensive PBKDF2 when Y != 0, creating fast/slow timing oracle. Full 3-step attack (~1024 iterations for 1024-bit RSA). Calibrate timing bounds with known-fast/known-slow samples.
• Polynomial hash (trivial root): g(0) = 0 for polynomial hash; craft suffix for msg = 0 (mod P), signature = 0
• Polynomial CRT in GF(2)[x]: Collect ~20 remainders r = flag mod f, filter coprime, CRT combine
• Affine over composite modulus: CRT in each prime factor field; Gauss-Jordan per prime
• RSA p=q validation bypass: Set p=q so server computes wrong phi=(p-1)^2 instead of p*(p-1); test decryption fails, leaking ciphertext
• RSA cube root CRT (gcd(e,phi)>1): When all primes ≡ 1 mod e, compute eth roots per-prime via nthroot_mod, enumerate CRT combinations (3^k feasible for small k)
• Factoring from phi(n) multiple: Any multiple of phi(n) (e.g., e*d-1) enables factoring via Miller-Rabin square root technique; succeeds with prob ≥ 1/2 per attempt

See rsa-attacks.md and advanced-math.md for full code examples.

Elliptic Curve Attacks

• Small subgroup: Check curve order for small factors; Pohlig-Hellman + CRT
• Invalid curve: Send points on weaker curves if validation missing
• Singular curves: Discriminant = 0; DLP maps to additive/multiplicative group
• Smart's attack: Anomalous curves (order = p); p-adic lift solves DLP in O(1)
• Fault injection: Compare correct vs faulty output; recover key bit-by-bit
• Clock group (x^2+y^2=1): Order = p+1 (not p-1!); Pohlig-Hellman when p+1 is smooth
• Isogenies: Graph traversal via modular polynomials; pathfinding via LCA
• ECDSA nonce reuse: Same r in two signatures leaks nonce k and private key d via modular arithmetic. Check for repeated r values
• Braid group DH: Alexander polynomial is multiplicative under braid concatenation — Eve computes shared secret from public keys. See exotic-crypto.md
• Ed25519 torsion side channel: Cofactor h=8 leaks secret scalar bits when key derivation uses key = master * uid mod l; query powers of 2, check y-coordinate consistency
• Tropical semiring residuation: Tropical (min-plus) DH is broken — residual b* = max(Mb[i] - M[i][j]) recovers shared secret directly from public matrices

See ecc-attacks.md, advanced-math.md, and exotic-crypto.md for full code examples.

Lattice / LWE Attacks

• LWE via CVP (Babai): Construct lattice from [q*I | 0; A^T | I], use fpylll CVP.babai to find closest vector, project to ternary {-1,0,1}. Watch for endianness mismatches between server description and actual encoding.
• LLL for approximate GCD: Short vector in lattice reveals hidden factors
• Multi-layer challenges: Geometry → subspace recovery → LWE → AES-GCM decryption chain

See advanced-math.md for full LWE solving code and multi-layer patterns.

ZKP & Constraint Solving

• ZKP cheating: For impossible problems (3-coloring K4), find hash collisions or predict PRNG salts
• Graph 3-coloring: nx.coloring.greedy_color(G, strategy='saturation_largest_first')
• Z3 solver: BitVec for bit-level, Int for arbitrary precision; BPF/SECCOMP filter solving
• Garbled circuits (free XOR): XOR three truth table entries to recover global delta
• Bigram substitution: OR-Tools CP-SAT with automaton constraint for known plaintext structure
• Trigram decomposition: Positions mod n form independent monoalphabetic ciphers
• Shamir SSS (deterministic coefficients): One share + seeded RNG = univariate equation in secret
• Race condition (TOCTOU): Synchronized concurrent requests bypass counter < N checks
• Groth16 broken setup (delta==gamma): Trivially forge: A=alpha, B=beta, C=-vk_x. Always check verifier constants first
• Groth16 proof replay: Unconstrained nullifier + no tracking = infinite replays from setup tx
• DV-SNARG forgery: With verifier oracle access, learn secret v values from unconstrained pairs, forge via CRS entry cancellation

See zkp-and-advanced.md for full code examples and solver patterns.

Modern Cipher Attacks (Additional)

• Affine over composite modulus: c = A*x+b (mod M), M composite (e.g., 65=5*13). Chosen-plaintext recovery via one-hot vectors, CRT inversion per prime factor. See modern-ciphers.md.
• Custom linear MAC forgery: XOR-based signature linear in secret blocks. Recover secrets from ~5 known pairs, forge for target. See modern-ciphers.md.
• Manger oracle (RSA threshold): RSA multiplicative + binary search on m*s < 2^128. ~128 queries to recover AES key.

Common Patterns

• RSA basics: phi = (p-1)*(q-1), d = inverse(e, phi), m = pow(c, d, n). See rsa-attacks.md for full examples.
• XOR: from pwn import xor; xor(ct, key). See classic-ciphers.md for XOR variants.

V8 XorShift128+ (Math.random) State Recovery

Pattern: V8 JavaScript engine uses xs128p PRNG for Math.random(). Given 5-10 consecutive outputs of Math.floor(CONST * Math.random()), recover internal state (state0, state1) with Z3 QF_BV solver and predict future values. Values must be reversed (LIFO cache). Tool: d0nutptr/v8_rand_buster. See prng.md.

Chaotic PRNG (Logistic Map)

• Logistic map: x = r * x * (1 - x), r ≈ 3.99-4.0; seed recovery by brute-forcing high-precision decimals
• Keystream: struct.pack("<f", x) per iteration; XOR with ciphertext

See prng.md for full code.

Useful Tools

• Python: pip install pycryptodome z3-solver sympy gmpy2
• SageMath: sage -python script.py (required for ECC, Coppersmith, lattice attacks)
• RsaCtfTool: python RsaCtfTool.py -n <n> -e <e> --uncipher <c> — automated RSA attack suite (tries Wiener, Hastad, Fermat, Pollard, and many more)
• quipqiup.com: Automated substitution cipher solver (frequency + word pattern analysis)