Got user.
To be honest, I’ve never, ever, dealt with R*** at that level, so I was doing my field study while at it. But I probably spent 8 to 10 straight hours searching anything that would get me the foothold. Any exploits, CVEs, patches, versions, anything. Then I searched on a random place after hope was lost and I finally found it.
Even then, the payload was a bit confusing, I had to use a few online tools to write it properly and to mess with it around. The tool everyone uses was returning me a perfect message with my payload, where it shouldn’t.
For root, after many tries (and hours) on making things equal, I gave up on anything by the books and I went the ugly, manual way. It worked instantly.
Great box. I’ve learnt so much from it.