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Labs

Weekly hands-on lab. RE walkthroughs, exploits, original CTFs. Done in a sandbox.

labs
Apr 24, 2026 · 28 min solve · advanced

FlipVM: a tiny ISA that pretends to forget everything between instructions

A 29 KB statically-linked ELF ships next to a 27 KB blob of bytecode on crackmes.one — advertised as "a virtual machine with unique architecture and basic encryption at rest." This post takes the machine apart and rebuilds enough of it in Python to disassemble the blob and re-implement the mutation function the guest program uses to test its "customer password." The trick: almost every instruction is allowed to XOR the entire VM state with a one-byte broadcast before it executes, and the guest program uses that to run with a key that changes hundreds of times per function.

— machine forgets, we remember
Apr 24, 2026 · 6 minsolve · beginner

Shake It, Baby — An Encoding That Isn't

A "difficulty 1.6" Linux ELF from crackmes.one. The binary swaggers in with two dozen cryptic strings and a custom "decoder" function, but every decoy is a plant — the real password sits in plain sight, spelled out twice in a hex alphabet that `printf "%x"` reverses in a line.

— hex is not a disguise