bet3rd

I took a closer look at the stealmybitcoin.com CTF, which aims to demonstrate that PHP2SHELL is not realistically exploitable. So I gave it a try. Note: My analysis could be wrong, and I'm more than happy to be proven otherwise. Here’s what I found: • The server responds with Server: nginx and X-Powered-By: PHP/8.4.26. • My differential fingerprinting scanner independently confirmed at least PHP 8.2+ • Hypotheses: I considered two possible setups: ◦ nginx → PHP-FPM ◦ nginx → Apache → PHP-FPM/mod_php • After comparing the server's behavior against local test environments, the closest match appears to be nginx → PHP cli-server. Plot twist: the response behavior is consistent with the PHP cli-server serving a static index.html rather than an index.php. If that's indeed the case, the challenge appears to be intentionally made unexploitable. My conclusion (for now) is that I'm questioning whether this is a good-faith challenge. Happy to be corrected if I've missed something!