after we have downloaded the necessary files we can unzip them
unzip Survival\ of\ the\ Fittest.zip
we are presented with two files
Creature.sol
Setup.sol
What are these files?
.sol files are associated with Solidity. a programing language used for developing smart contracts on blockchain platforms, particularly Ethereum
Solidity is a high-level language that enables developers to write code for smart contracts, which are self-executing contracts with the terms of agreement directly written into the code
These .sol files contain logic and rules that govern the behavior of the smart contract when it is deployed on a blockchain
After writing solidity code, developers typically compile it into bytecode, which can be executed by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) or a compatible blockchains virtual machine
Once compiled, the bytecode is deployed as a smart contract on the blockchain
when we navigate to 159.65.20.166:30532
we can see the following
we can also view the docs
we also have within the connection tab
Lets set up
lets download foundry: a suite of tools that let you test and implement projects on the blockchain
To interact with the blockchain we need the following information
Private key: A cryptographic private key that is only known to the owner and is used to sign transactions, particularly for crypto's like bitcoin and ethereum, a private key is associated with a specific wallet address
The RPC URL :This is the endpoint or URL through which a user or application can make remote calls to interact with a blockchain node, it is often used to send requests to the blockchain network for tasks like querying information, sending transactions, or interacting with smart contracts
RPC call: in blockchain tech, a RPC allows a program to cause a procedure (subroutine) to execute on another address space, typically a remote server
The address of the target contract: In the context of smart contracts, the address refers to the unique identifier assigned to a deployed smart contract on the blockchain. Each smart contract has a distinct address
How do we interact with the RPC endpoint
when we had a look at the docs, we can see the rpc endpoint is located at /rpc
when we open these .sol files through vi we can see the following
Creatures.sol
we can see
a constructor
multiple functions that we can interact with using the cast tool
Setup.sol
we can see a few things
pragma solidity ^0.8.13: defines the version of the compiler and instructions on how to read the code
we can see we have functions specified with the function key word
we can see the function isSolved that t is declared as a public view, meaning it is only a view function, only to view data not modified it
our goal is to beat the creatures in the web application game
Modifying Data
within the Creatures.sol, we have the function strongAttack which deals deals a certain amount of damage to the creatures,
we can see the function takes an argument
we can see in the in the first box the argument type, then the value
Now we can use cast to modify the data
essentially this is a transaction in the blockchain
Once we have send this transaction if our specific value this should set us up to drain the lifePoints of the creatures
Guideline
The purpose of this README is to provide guidance for first-time participants attempting to solve a blockchain challenge.
API Spefication
This section provides a brief description of the web app's endpoints.
/restart: Restarts the local chain without restarting the entire container.
/rpc: The RPC endpoint used for interacting with the network.
/flag: After solving the challenge, accessing this endpoint returns the flag and restarts the chain to its initial state. To retrieve the flag again, you must solve the challenge again.
/connection_info: This endpoint provides the necessary information for interacting with the challenge, including:
User's private key.
User's wallet address.
Setup contract's address.
Main challenge contract's address.
Contract Sources
In these challenges, you will encounter two types of smart contract source files: Setup.sol and the challenge files.
Setup.sol
The Setup.sol file contains a single contract called Setup. This contract handles all the initialization actions. It typically includes three functions:
constructor(): Automatically called once during contract deployment and cannot be called again. It performs initialization actions such as deploying the challenge contracts.
TARGET(): Returns the address of the challenge contract.
isSolved(): Defines the final objective of the challenge. It returns true if the challenge is solved, and false otherwise.
Other source files
The remaining files consist of the challenge contracts. You need to interact with these contracts to solve the challenge. Carefully analyze their source code to understand how to exploit vulnerabilities, based on the objective specified in the isSolved() function of the Setup contract.
Interacting with the blockchain
To interact with the smart contracts on the private chain, you will need:
A private key with some Ether, which is provided via the /connection_info endpoint.
The address of the target contract. You can find both the Setup's and the Target's addresses in the connection_info or retrieve the target's address using the TARGET() function within the Setup contract.
The RPC URL, which can be found in the /rpc endpoint.
Once you have collected all the connection information, you can use tools like web3py or web3js to make function calls in the smart contracts or perform other necessary actions. You can find useful tutorials for both options with a quick online search. Alternatively, you can utilize tools such as foundry-rs or hardhat as convenient command-line interfaces (CLI) to interact with the blockchain. Please note that there may be fewer online examples available for these tools compared to the other alternatives. Since we prefer using foundry, we will provide a brief tutorial.
Short Foundry Tutorial
The solidity docs can be found here. The purpose of this guide is to get you up to speed a little quicker and get you to familiarize yourselves with foundry and not actually teach you all of its capabilities.
Calling a view function
In Solidity, view functions are used to read data without making any changes. You can identify these functions by the view modifier in their declaration, such as function isSolve() public view;. To call these functions, you don't need to sign a transaction; you can simply query for data using the cast tool with the following command:
cast call $ADDRESS_TARGET "functionToCall()" --rpc-url $RPC_URL
If the function requires arguments, you need to specify the argument types within braces and provide their values outside the string, like this:
cast call $ADDRESS_TARGET "functionWithArgs(uint, bool)" 5 true --rpc-url $RPC_URL
Calling a normal function
To call a function that modifies data, you need to sign the transaction. These functions are any non-view and non-pure functions in Solidity. You can use the cast tool again with the following command:
cast send $ADDRESS_TARGET "functionToCall()" --rpc-url $RPC_URL --private-key $PRIVATE_KEY
If the function has arguments, you follow the same pattern as before:
cast send $ADDRESS_TARGET "functionWithArgs(uint)" 100 --rpc-url $RPC_URL --private-key $PRIVATE_KEY
Additionally, some functions may be marked as payable, which means they can accept Ether along with the call. You can specify the value using the --value flag:
cast send $ADDRESS_TARGET "functionToCall()" --rpc-url $RPC_URL --private-key $PRIVATE_KEY --value 100
Initializing a forge project
To create and deploy smart contracts, we will use another tool called forge from the foundry-rs suite. You can initialize an empty forge project using the command:
forge init .
You can optionally use flags like --no-git to skip initializing a Git repository and other useful options. The project will contain the following directories and files:
src/: This is where you write your smart contracts. It initially contains an example contract called Counter.sol.
test/: This is where you write tests. There is an example test file called Counter.t.sol. You can run these tests using the forge test command. Feel free to explore this feature on your own as it is highly useful but beyond the scope of our discussion.
script/: This folder is used for scripts, which are batch Solidity commands that run on-chain. An example script could be a deployment script. The folder contains an example script called Counter.s.sol. You can execute these scripts using forge script script/Counter.s.sol along with additional flags based on your requirements. Feel free to experiment with this feature as it is extremely useful.
lib/: This is where you place any libraries. By default, there is only one library called forge-std, which includes useful functions for debugging and testing. You can download additional libraries using the forge install command. For example, you can install the commonly used openzeppelin-contracts library from the OpenZeppelin repository with forge install openzeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts.
foundry.toml: This is the configuration file for forge. You usually don't need to deal with it during exploitation, but it is helpful for development purposes.
Deploying a Contract
The final step is to deploy a smart contract after completing the coding. This can be done using the forge tool. The command is as follows:
forge create src/Contract.sol:ContractName --rpc-url $RPC_URL --private-key $PRIVATE_KEY
After executing this command, the deployer's address (which is essentially our address), the transaction hash, and the deployed contract's address will be printed on the screen. The deployed contract's address is the one we need to use for interacting with it.
If our contract has a payable constructor, we can use the --value flag in the same way as in the cast send command:
forge create src/Contract.sol:ContractName --rpc-url $RPC_URL --private-key $PRIVATE_KEY --value 10000
Additionally, if the constructor has arguments, we can specify them using the --constructor-args flag and provide the arguments in the same order they appear in the constructor. For example, if the constructor is defined as constructor(uint256, bytes32, bool), we would use the following command:
forge create src/Contract.sol:ContractName --rpc-url $RPC_URL --private-key $PRIVATE_KEY --constructor-args 14241 0x123456 false
You can combine multiple flags and there are more flags available that we haven't mentioned here. However, these are the most common ones. It is highly recommended to explore the tools while solving the challenges, as they greatly simplify the process. Other options to consider are hardhat (JavaScript) or brownie (Python), which use different programming languages instead of Solidity.
