So I have found temp user creds,
Retrieved files under ruscanner etc.
Read them and Found a username and hash.
Read all the other files I can find like xmls but not just unsure of where to go, how I leverage this hash I don’t see any exe?
The high port doesn’t debug the hash either.
Despite the claims, this is really not an “easy” box. If this is your first one, you might struggle a lot with what is asked to get user/root. Dont beat yourself up about this, just accept the fact that this would have been better off marked Medium. You might even want to look at Open Admin instead as a nice starter box.
Having said this.
Read all the files. One points to a place you think you cant go, but you can. Go there and find the new stuff.
Use the new stuff to convert the hash you have into a password.
Use the username and password to access, this will allow you to find more stuff.
Use the new stuff you have to access the high port in a more meaningful manner.
Now you can find a more powerful user’s hash but you need to decompile the binary to know what’s changed when it comes to reversing it to a cleartext password.
When you get the cleartext password, you can go back to the first port and connect to the filesystem as the more powerful user. Root look awaits.
For those of you who are using Linux and hit the programming portion of this box. The lang here uses libs only available on Windows and it will not work on mono or anything that uses it. HOWEVER just use the portion of code that converts the pass
with Rfc2898DeriveBytes and dump the bytes to a file and convert the rest with python. EZ mode. Far easier then fighting with the lang on Linux for sure.
rooted,
What a journey that was.
I had fun for sure, but the user flag did my head in lol - not my strong point in the method used there but never give up - Fiddler is your friend (at least for me)
Thank you @VbScrub for creating this.
Great box to do. Really refreshing NOT to have to pop some contrived dodgy web functionailty to get a low level shell on a box. A good box to intro anyone new to this kind of thing. It makes you think a little, investigate a little, and get to know your tools a lot.
I haven’t been able to get on HTB for a while so thought I’ll go straight to a nice easy box on the list and landed on Nest. It was a little trickier than I thought it would be that’s for sure. That’s not to say this box is hard, not at all, it’s actually quite easy if you have any sort of programming experience. Now I’m by far the best when it comes to reversing code so this took me a few more minutescoughhours to do but once you get through it everything just falls into place.
This box flows nicely from one clue to the next, no guessing is needed you just need to enumerate well, keep good notes, think about why something is where it is, and think about what kind of operaing system you’re dealing with. Basically the appraoch you should take with any HTB challenge and any pentest you ever do.
I read through some posts on here after checking this box out and I see people thought it was harder than easy. I’m not so sure about that. Everything is hard if you haven’t done it or heard about something before but if you look at this box after you’ve done it you’d see actually everything is there in front of you each step of the way you just need to know how to use your tools, and don’t expect to just do an easy rated box in 10 minutes.
@VbScrub thanks for making this box, I really enjoyed it. I look forward to your next one.
Really enjoyed this box, my first root of an active machine! @VbScrub clearly put a lot of thought into it, nice trail of breadcrumbs and not many rabbit holes. CyberChef came in useful on a couple occasions. Also stumbled across the password (think it was to eventually get root) by just reading the help/docs for s**c*****, trying all the commands and noticing something odd.
One tip I’ve got is don’t assume just because you can’t access a certain dir that you can’t access any of its subdirs or files. Windows/NTFS seems to allow you to “skip” dirs in a path you don’t have permissions for.