I’m by no means a python expert (more like a noob to it), but it took me some 10 mins to get it done.
Just 2 libs (hashlib and requests).
Good fun optimizing the code for speed… good old days 
Feel free to PM me for a nudge.
Hi everyone ! I’ve got the flag with “request”, “hashlib” and “re”. But, in the first place, I tried with BeautifoulSoup instead of “re” and its not working.
I’d like to figure out why, can someone contact me in private ? 
Has anyone successfully completed this with a bash script? It runs quickly but I must be missing something essential.
Type your comment> @taylnick said:
Has anyone successfully completed this with a bash script? It runs quickly but I must be missing something essential.
I guess curl is just slow compared to python. I thought it didn’t work because of the use of cookies but I didn’t test further.
Small hint. Use hexdigest()…
Type your comment> @taylnick said:
Has anyone successfully completed this with a bash script? It runs quickly but I must be missing something essential.
Just solved it using bash/curl 
Script runtime ~250ms
Was a bit of a pain in the a**, as I started on macOS and then ported the script to Kali, but some “macOS specialities” broke the script there in just too many ways 
So, in the end I did a lot of debugging using Wireshark, to get it working. Big thanks for that tip anyway (was mentioned somewhere here before), I really can just recommend it.
Although I found the flag using Python, I am really interested in the solution in bash using curl, sed and md5sum. I just can’t seem to get it fast enough, or I made an error somewhere…
good early challenge for scripting.
I tried to get the answer using a bash terminal , but i cant seem to get it wo work.
curl (get) > grep > cut > md5sum > awk > curl (post)
The GET curl has the -c cookie jar, and the POST curl has the -b cookie flags
edit Just tried timing the bash script and it takes .44s so im assuming thats why im getting to slow :neutral:
I finally did it! Learnt a lot about Python and BeautifulSoup.
one extra space character cost me several hours in my bash script 
but got there in the end
just completed using plain old javascript 
for php script , its slow, but good enough
real 0m0.588s
user 0m0.001s
sys 0m0.022s
Got the flag. Nice challenge, got to practice requests which I hadn’t done much of in python.
Spoiler Removed
When writing a python script, remember that the data goes as dictionary in the POST request, not as a string with “hash=value”
If you are doing it on the command line and are sure you are doing it correctly, just keep trying, because I was getting too slow, and then finally got it, so it must be right on the edge of whatever the timer is.
I wrote it in php, very simple but had to use a vps as my home connection was just too slow.
Question is, how to understand, problem in connection or with data that I send? I wrote 2 scripts: on Ruby and Crystal, both is fail. Maybe something wrong with my hash, but I get only Too Slow =(
Can I dm someone for a hint? I’m still ‘too slow’, but I think I’ve crossed off the following:
- Sending proper md5 digest
- Keeping connection open
- Biscuits