PwnAdventure Part1 - Setup

What is this series about ?

I recently came across LiverOverflow’s youtube series on PwnAdventure3. I got interested in this because it involves game hacking which I think is very cool. Please note that this series will not be different from that of LiveOveflow’s and this blog is just a recording of my journey. I hope you enjoy it!

What is PwnAdventure ?

PwnAdventure is a MMORPG which is intentionally vulnerable to hacks and this was made for a CTF which I think is really cool. It was originally made for education game developers about vulnerabilities found in video games.

Setup

• Originally the game server was hosted by the organizers during the time of the CTF but it is currently down so I decided to host it on my own server.
• I followed the same steps as LiveOverflow in this video
• Among all the options he shows I chose to create a droplet on DigitalOcean and used Docker to run the server from the same git repository that LiveOverflow uses.
  

Exact Steps

• I registered an account on DigitalOcean using a referral link to get 100$ in credits for free. You can use this link to get yourselves 100$ too.
• Then I created a droplet on DigitalOcean with the following specifications:
  • Name: pwn3
  • Region: Bangalore
  • Memory: 4GB
  • Image: Ubuntu 20.04
  • CPU: 2 vCPU
  • Disk: 80GB
  • Monitoring: on
  • Cost: $24/month
  • Authentication: SSH
• After creating the droplet I was given the IP address of the droplet. I SSHed into the droplet as root.
• I then followed the instructions for installation as mention in this repository and installed the server.
• I then started the server by running the command - docker-compose up -d to run the server in detached mode.

  I came across and error while installing which was bind source path does not exist: ./postgres-data which is also mentioned in this issue here. It is essentially solved by creating a directory postgres-data.
  

Installing Game Client on Windows

For installing the game client of windows download the client files from here and extract it. Edit the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file (with admin privileges) and add the following lines:

1
2

IP.IP.IP.IP master.pwn3
IP.IP.IP.IP game.pwn3

Here replace the IP.IP.IP.IP with the IP address of the droplet.Now open the server.ini file which is in the game folder and change it to:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

[MasterServer]
Hostname=master.pwn3
Port=3333

[GameServer]
Hostname=
Port=3000
Username=
Password=

The server has been configured now open the game and register yourself. After registering you get a team hash which can be used to join your team by other players.

Installing Game Client on Linux

For installing the game client of linux download the client files from here and extract it. Edit the /etc/hosts file (with root priviliges) and add the following lines:

1
2

IP.IP.IP.IP master.pwn3
IP.IP.IP.IP game.pwn3

Here replace the IP.IP.IP.IP with the IP address of the droplet.Now open the server.ini file which is in the game folder and change it to:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

[MasterServer]
Hostname=master.pwn3
Port=3333

[GameServer]
Hostname=
Port=3000
Username=
Password=

The server has been configured now open the game and register yourself. After registering you get a team hash which can be used to join your team by other players.