Hack the Box: Pusheen Loves Graphs

Challenge Lab: Stego

Difficulty: Easy

“Pusheen just loves graphs, Graphs and IDA. Did you know cats are weirdly controlling about their reverse engineering tools? Pusheen just won’t use anything except IDA.”

Zip Password: hackthebox

sha256: 25d39131fd88a487242d6bbd528c63d3a0d53f00a136a0b5f3d4bddf73ee5451

I started off by downloading IDA Freeware, since Pusheen has been pretty explicit about only using IDA.

Then I looked at the file:

If you view it in a text editor you will see Pusheen:

I opened it up in IDA:

I kept all the default settings. When you open it, you will get a few error messages. Just keep hitting “OK”.

At this point you want to go here:

And then to the graph tab, because Pusheen loves graphs. Raise the maximum number of nodes. I picked 8000 randomly:

Next, head to the main function and a graph will appear with the flag!

An easy one today, but who doesn’t love Pusheen?

I’m pretty excited because I will be participating in the NCL Fall 2020 Team Game with my college this weekend, as well as the MAGIC CTF. I can’t post write-ups for either one, but it should be a good time.

Happy Hacking! ❤