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CS 161 Project 1

Spica (Launched 1977)

  • Username: spica
  • Click to reveal password: alanguage
  • Points: 15
The logs inside the Remus satellite contain a cryptic reference to a highly
intelligent bot. Of course, you had heard of the urban legend of EvanBot, the
top-secret genius AI that single-handedly developed Caltopian space travel
technology, but the message in Remus suggests that it may be more than a
legend. You decide to investigate further and follow the hint to Spica. Spica
is an old Gobian Union geolocation satellite with a utility for viewing
telemetry log files. Exploit this utility and hack into Spica to see what
secrets it holds about the mysterious EvanBot.

telemetry is the vulnerable C program in this question. It takes a file and prints out its contents, but it expects the file to be specially formatted: The first byte of the file specifies its length, followed by the actual file.

The program also implements a check to make sure the buffer isn’t too large. Can you see a way to get around this check?

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