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puzzle-gamma-ray

DO NOT FORK THE REPOSITORY, AS IT WILL MAKE YOUR SOLUTION PUBLIC. INSTEAD, CLONE IT AND ADD A NEW REMOTE TO A PRIVATE REPOSITORY, OR SUBMIT A GIST

Trying it out

Use cargo run --release to see it in action

Submitting a solution

Submit a solution

Submit a write-up

Puzzle description

|___  /| | / / | | | |          | |
   / / | |/ /  | |_| | __ _  ___| | __
  / /  |    \  |  _  |/ _` |/ __| |/ /
./ /___| |\  \ | | | | (_| | (__|   <
\_____/\_| \_/ \_| |_/\__,_|\___|_|\_\

Bob was deeply inspired by the Zcash design [1] for private transactions and had some pretty cool ideas on how to adapt it for his requirements. He was also inspired by the Mina design for the lightest blockchain and wanted to combine the two. In order to achieve that, Bob used the MNT6753 cycle of curves to enable efficient infinite recursion, and used elliptic curve public keys to authorize spends. He released a first version of the system to the world and Alice soon announced she was able to double spend by creating two different nullifiers for the same key...

[1] https://zips.z.cash/protocol/protocol.pdf

Puzzle write-up

The goal of this puzzle is to create a new nullifier (nullifier_hack) in order to be able to double spend using the protocol.

The reason why this might be possible is that Bob used the MNT7653 cycle of curves, which is represented in Weierstrass form in the circuit. In this cycle of curves, both (x, y) and (x, -y) are valid points for spending.

Therefore, only the x-coordinate of an elliptic curve point is used as the leaf node and there are 2 possible points with the same x-coordinate.

Considering that we already know (secret * G), we need to find its negation, that is (-secret * G). The tricky part is that leaked_secret is specified in MNT4BigFr, but the x-coordinate is computed over MNT6BigFr, so we need to calculate our secret_hack as MNT4BigFr::from(MNT6BigFr::MODULUS) - leaked_secret.

Once we calculate our secret_hack, all we have to do is calculate the nullifier_hack the same way as the original one was calculated: by using the Poseidon hash function on the new secret.

Now, our secret_hack and nullifier_hack are able to pass the circuit checking parameters.

This was a fun puzzle which allowed me to have a better understanding of nullifiers and increase my awareness to the cycle of curves that we use and their potential vulnerabilities.