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Game hacking / reverse engineering / CTF

Pwn Adventure 3 Writeups

A writeup series for Pwn Adventure 3, focused on building cheats as a way to learn game reverse engineering, debugging, memory editing, and client instrumentation.

Series Scope

The posts are planned as a practical path from first recon to working game-hacking tooling. The exact article order may change as the writeups are filled in, but this page will remain the index for the full series.

Images for this series should live under /images/posts/pwn-adventure-3/. Code snippets can use fenced Markdown blocks such as ```cpp, ```python, ```bash, and ```asm.

Published Posts

Planned Outline

0. Setup, Threat Model, and Toolchain

Install the game, establish the lab environment, define the rules of the target, and prepare tools such as Cheat Engine, Ghidra/IDA, x64dbg or gdb, process monitors, packet capture, and helper scripts.

1. Recon: Files, Processes, and Runtime Surface

Map the game directory, binaries, configuration files, logs, loaded modules, network endpoints, and Unreal Engine artifacts. The goal is to understand what can be inspected before modifying anything.

2. Memory Scanning and First Cheats

Locate basic player state such as health, mana, gold, coordinates, and inventory values. Turn manual scans into repeatable pointer paths or scripted reads/writes.

3. Static Reversing of Game Logic

Use symbols, strings, RTTI, Unreal Engine patterns, and cross references to recover important classes and functions. Connect static findings to runtime addresses.

4. Hooking, Patching, and In-Process Tooling

Build small hooks and patches for movement, cooldowns, damage, and item behavior. Cover DLL injection or equivalent loading, trampolines, calling conventions, and crash-resistant iteration.

5. ESP, Teleport, and Coordinate Systems

Recover world positions, camera data, entity lists, and projection math for visual overlays and teleport-style tooling.

6. Networking and Client/Server Trust Boundaries

Inspect traffic, identify which actions are client-authoritative, and reason about where cheat logic succeeds or fails. Keep the focus on CTF lab analysis and reproducible writeup evidence.

7. Automation and Exploit Chaining

Combine primitives into reusable scripts or tools: farming, route automation, challenge solving, and state manipulation workflows.

8. Challenge Writeups

Document individual Pwn Adventure 3 objectives with screenshots, code, before/after state, root cause, and final solve steps.