Flare-On 2017 Challenge #5 — pewpewboat.exe

As usual, the first thing to do when tackling the challenge is to run the binary first, to see what it does. You will soon learn that it’s not actually a Windows executable, but rather a 64-bit Linux ELF.

$ ./pewpewboat.exe
Loading first pew pew map...
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
  _________________
A |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|
B |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|
C |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|
D |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|
E |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|
F |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|
G |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|
H |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|

Rank: Seaman Recruit

Welcome to pewpewboat! We just loaded a pew pew map, start shootin'!

Enter a coordinate:

So this is a Battleship game. Playing manually for a bit, I see the “ships” form up in the shape what looked like a letter. Hmm could this be the flag?

It’s now time to read the code.

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