Just rooted this box. Good times, honestly.
I was really frustrated with the initial foothold. I learned a bunch there, and I could have sworn that I tried what ended up working before and it didn’t work, but that’s probably on me. I really liked the initial entry to this machine.
Root was a bit trickier. The solution was simple and there are plenty of hints. The usual actually, enumeration of files and then their contents is key for privesc.
PM me with any questions.