treewide: add challenge config for privileged by zardus · Pull Request #89 · pwncollege/challenges

zardus · 2026-02-06T23:35:12Z

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Pull request overview

Adds per-challenge configuration to pwnshop to allow running certain challenges’ Docker containers in --privileged mode (configured via challenge.yml), and enables this mode for a set of legacy “intercepting-communication” challenges.

Changes:

Add challenge.yml parsing (load_challenge_config) and a privileged flag to lib.run_challenge.
Wire the privileged setting into pwnshop run and pwnshop test.
Add pyyaml dependency and introduce challenge.yml files setting privileged: true for specific challenges.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 33 out of 34 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
tools/pwnshop/uv.lock	Bumps lock revision and adds PyYAML package metadata.
tools/pwnshop/src/pwnshop/lib/init.py	Adds YAML config loading and switches Docker run options based on `privileged`.
tools/pwnshop/src/pwnshop/commands/test.py	Loads per-challenge config and passes `privileged` into container runner.
tools/pwnshop/src/pwnshop/commands/run.py	Loads per-challenge config and passes `privileged` into container runner.
tools/pwnshop/pyproject.toml	Adds `pyyaml` dependency.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/udp-spoof-host/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/udp-spoof-host-4/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/udp-spoof-host-3/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/udp-spoof-host-2/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/udp-2/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/udp-1/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/sniff-cookie/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-9/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-8/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-7/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-6/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-5/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-4/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-3/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-2/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-1b/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-1a/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-14/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-13/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-12/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-11/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-10/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/level-1/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/firewall-3/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/firewall-2/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/firewall-1/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/dos-3/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/dos-2/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.
challenges/legacy/intro-to-cybersecurity/intercepting-communication/dos-1/challenge.yml	Enables privileged mode for this challenge.

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Copilot · 2026-02-06T23:38:48Z

+def load_challenge_config(challenge_path: pathlib.Path) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+    config = dict(CHALLENGE_CONFIG_DEFAULTS)
+    config_file = challenge_path / "challenge.yml"
+    if config_file.is_file():
+        logger.debug("loading challenge config from %s", config_file)
+        with open(config_file) as f:
+            user_config = yaml.safe_load(f) or {}
+        config.update(user_config)
+    return config


yaml.safe_load() can return non-mapping values (e.g., a list/string) or a mapping with unexpected types. In those cases config.update(user_config) will raise at runtime, and privileged could end up non-bool (e.g., quoted "false" becomes a truthy string). Consider validating that user_config is a dict and that user_config.get("privileged") is either absent or a bool (otherwise raise a clear error or ignore with a warning).

Copilot · 2026-02-06T23:38:48Z

+        logger.debug("loading challenge config from %s", config_file)
+        with open(config_file) as f:
+            user_config = yaml.safe_load(f) or {}


This reads challenge.yml with open(config_file) using the platform default encoding. To avoid locale-dependent failures, prefer config_file.open(encoding="utf-8") (or an explicit encoding consistent with the rest of the file loader logic).

Copilot · 2026-02-06T23:38:48Z

@@ -159,8 +177,7 @@ def run_challenge(
                "--detach",
                "--init",
                "--user=0:0",
-                "--device=/dev/kvm",
-                "--cap-add=SYS_PTRACE",
+                *(["--privileged"] if privileged else ["--device=/dev/kvm", "--cap-add=SYS_PTRACE"]),


Allowing challenge.yml to enable --privileged means an untrusted PR can cause CI to run fully privileged containers on the GitHub runner. That materially increases the blast radius vs the previous --device=/dev/kvm + --cap-add=SYS_PTRACE. Consider gating privileged mode behind an explicit CLI flag / env var that is disabled in CI by default (or an allowlist of known-safe challenge paths), and fail with a clear message when privileged is requested but not permitted.

@ConnorNelson thoughts on this?

I don't think we actually care about the integrity of the CI host, at least not currently.

Are we sure we adequately wipe the decryption keys? :-)

ConnorNelson · 2026-02-06T23:50:12Z

I'm currently working on adding kata support to this repo, do we want to hold off for that?

For example, some challenges make demands of what features are available in the kernel (landlock, ebpf, etc).

Also no tests were actually run here. I just manually triggered a run: https://github.com/pwncollege/challenges/actions/runs/21769956407. This causes all challenges to be tested, which is generally what we want to do when we make bigger changes (maybe we can automatically detect this somehow).

zardus · 2026-02-07T01:37:25Z

Oh, if you're implementing kata, let's go with that instead of this PR.

ConnorNelson · 2026-02-18T05:06:06Z

Resolved by #111

Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings February 6, 2026 23:35

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of zardus February 6, 2026 23:35 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Feb 6, 2026

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pwnshop: add challenge.yml support for privileged containers

71d5b6c

zardus force-pushed the pwnshop/privileged branch from 6015e47 to 71d5b6c Compare February 6, 2026 23:45

ConnorNelson changed the title ~~Pwnshop/privileged~~ treewide: add challenge config for privileged Feb 6, 2026

ConnorNelson closed this Feb 18, 2026

ConnorNelson deleted the pwnshop/privileged branch February 18, 2026 05:06

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treewide: add challenge config for privileged - #89

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