PlaidCTF this year had very insane challenges. Although I have spent a lot of time working on those crypto challenges, I was only able to solve leaky block cipher.
This completely legitimate™ block cipher looks a bit like GCM, but my computer plumber keeps complaining about water residue. Can you help me spot the leak? The challenge has a hand-crafted AEAD scheme. We are required to go through 20 rounds of challenges, and this is how each round proceeds…