Official Passage Discussion

got both users fast but stuck on root for several days… cant find anything interesting in home directory :frowning: my thoughts were that i can do smthing with .X**** file but i still cant find decision. can anyone help me please to take me in right way? PM or here.
thank you! :slight_smile:

@he110w0r1d said:

got both users fast but stuck on root for several days… cant find anything interesting in home directory :frowning: my thoughts were that i can do smthing with .X**** file but i still cant find decision. can anyone help me please to take me in right way? PM or here.
thank you! :slight_smile:

The best non-spoiler I can come up with is:

Type your comment> @TazWake said:

@he110w0r1d said:

got both users fast but stuck on root for several days… cant find anything interesting in home directory :frowning: my thoughts were that i can do smthing with .X**** file but i still cant find decision. can anyone help me please to take me in right way? PM or here.
thank you! :slight_smile:

The best non-spoiler I can come up with is:

Official Passage Discussion - #232 by TazWake - Machines - Hack The Box :: Forums

Thank you, @TazWake ! Checked everything again line by line and found a solution.
Nice and funny machine.

DONE! What a box!

root@passage:~# pwd && id
/root
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)

To those who stuck on root - you can be sure you’re on the right way staying home, and also don’t forget to watch for processes running by root. I hope it’s not much of a spoiler. If you cannot find any interesting file inside home, read all the files again and again, you’ll finally get what you need. pspy might help you connect some dots together, and direct you to the correct path. And the last - always take it easy, don’t get frustrated.

Have fun from process, not result.

Type your comment> @carbide said:

To those who stuck on root - you can be sure you’re on the right way staying home, and also don’t forget to watch for processes running by root. Pspy might help you.

This is wrong/unintended. Try the same after resetting the machine. You can’t see what you saw already in ‘ps’ and ‘pspy’ will not connects the dots together. This happens when you doing the machine which is already compromised by someone and left it in broken state. Make sure to reset it and try again. :slight_smile:

Type your comment> @gunroot said:

Type your comment> @carbide said:

To those who stuck on root - you can be sure you’re on the right way staying home, and also don’t forget to watch for processes running by root. Pspy might help you.

You can’t see what you saw already in ‘ps’ and ‘pspy’ will not connects the dots together.

Actually I saw that thing everytime I ran pspy, and I ran it many times to be honest, as I spent 1.5 days working on the machine. I was just unable to notice it, or maybe I was, but even the idea of it being the way to go seemed idiotic to me.

Reading hints here not only doesn’t help one, it implicitly makes it even worse for the following reasons: these hints are confusing, non-making any sense, make you question your current direction and, finally, your own skills. There’s only one percent of 1% who really bother to provide useful hints and not leave a spoiler (pretty hard) to those who really need help and are stuck, the rest just bother to show everyone they haxed the machine, that they have skills or something like that.

So, I strongly recommend always follow yours own intuition, and if you need a hint, you can just DM someone and ask them to give you a clear hint, as hints that are meant to be useful and not spoiling at the same time are very confusing, and unlikely are to help.

@carbide don’t take it deep. I’m also pwned this machine exactly the same way you did. For a clarification, I asked the Machine Creator if this is the way or not. He said that my way is an unintended method. So I again did the root part after resetting in the intended way.

Moreover, people can’t give a direct hint here as it will be flagged as spoiler. All they can do is providing a blurry pointer to us.

Let’s discuss about this one. :wink:

Anyone able to help with root?

@wooly13 said:

Anyone able to help with root?

Yes

Type your comment> @wooly13 said:

Anyone able to help with root?

Yes, if you mention where you’re stuck.

rooted finally, very funny box :slight_smile:

Spoiler Removed

@chiefgreek said:

can see how root is obtained with the command but need user 2 creds even with sudo - been thru the man page

Then you’ve got something wrong. You don’t need sudo for this.

Just rooted Passage, nice machine! I really enjoyed this one. Many thanks, @ChefByzen for creating this machine. For every part from the user to root, please read every file carefully!

If you’ve been stuck an need a nudge, please DM

Rooted. Message for help

any nudge for user1? , i have like 5 hashes i cant crack any of them

UPDATE: gotcha

i am in p*ul directory but when i try to pass the user.txt (flag for user) htb says incorrect flag…?anyone know why this happening

@xenofon said:
i am in p*ul directory but when i try to pass the user.txt (flag for user) htb says incorrect flag…?anyone know why this happening

ok its done ,sorry

any nudge for root?