Hints can't be unlocked when challenge name has special charactes (SQLite)

I’ve been running a Czech CTF for a couple days now. Users have been complaining about the inability to buy hints. I investigated and found out that the presence of characters like “ž” or “é” in the challenge name does not play nice with SQLite when buying hints. I’m attaching the error message. The challenge name was Cože? Jaké heslo? (means What password?). Removing the Czech characters fixed the problem, but it forces me to not use correct Czech.

Instance details:

• Debian 9 (stretch)
• CTFd-1.0.3
• SQLite (libsqlite3-0:amd64 - 3.16.2-5)

ProgrammingError: (sqlite3.ProgrammingError) You must not use 8-bit bytestrings unless you use a text_factory that can interpret 8-bit bytestrings (like text_factory = str). It is highly recommended that you instead just switch your application to Unicode strings. [SQL: u'INSERT INTO awards (teamid, name, description, date, value, category, icon) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)'] [parameters: (24, 'Hint for Co\xc5\xbee? Jak\xc3\xa9 heslo?', None, '2017-09-07 09:46:29.728823', -25, None, None)]

[ColdHeat]

Okay @octaroot here is the solution:

In challenges.py Look for this line:

award = Awards(teamid=session['id'], name='Hint for {}'.format(chal.name), value=(-hint.cost))

and change it to:

award = Awards(teamid=session['id'], name=unicode('Hint for {}'.format(chal.name)), value=(-hint.cost))

There will be a better fix for this in master.

[ColdHeat]

Yeah master has a variety of Python 3 fixes that you would need to use. The 1.0.3 release is behind and there will be a new release this weekend.