Official Academy Discussion

I got the user flag, but how do I escalate to root I am confused…plz help…

any hints for as user to escalate admin priv

Rooted

I got a directory on the web server named Mo*****_f**** does this one help or I am in a rabbit hole

Type your comment> @St4yc4lm said:

I got a directory on the web server named Mo*****_f**** does this one help or I am in a rabbit hole

I guess it’s a rabbit hole, since you should find a more interesting page once you are more privileged than the mass…

rooted nice box

Type your comment> @LMAY75 said:

Can… this be a feature on HtB?

Not the vuln obviously but the “Academy” thing. Was not expecting to see something so put together on a box, fantastic work @egre55 and @mrb3n

Lol, it actually is. Just saw the video in the ippsec youtube feeds…

Never been so stuck. Can someone give me a nudge for the foothold please, I must be blind. Not finding anything apart from the login portals and the sample user page

Rooted, In two minds about the box.
Good that in highlighted my overeliance on enum scripts such as linpeas
Bad that I went down so many rabbit holes because of my overeliance on enum scripts.

If anyone who rooted this under <2 hours could DM me what there approach to enum is, I would appreciate it.

Is it just a mix of opensource scripts, or rigourous use of grep or just experience to know where to look.

EDIT: I’ve been told linpeas does highlight the thing but isn’t as obvious as I would have though. Probably a good ide to supplement linpeas with a couple greps

i was chasing egre55 all the time lol and skipped other users

I could really do with a nudge for root…

uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)

This took forever and I overlooked multiple times… I personally would not rate this an easy box tbh, but it was a fun one for sure. Probably I am just a noob, lol.

Really enjoyed this box - had hoped it was going to be easy enough to blitz through and get a good final rank but sadly stalled at the user stage.

Foothold: Classic web app techniques lead to some valuable info and red herrings, ignore the most obvious bits when you inevitably run into them and search for something else, which will require some less obvious info.

User: Enumeration, enumeration, enumeration, it will probably be obvious if you look hard enough

Root: You can now access some new info, I needed Google to tell me how to interpret the data that I needed though. Once I had this data, it was just a case of a classic root escalation technique.

Rooted. An OSCP-like box. Recommend for who gonna have OSCP exam

any hint guys

Got the foothold, trying to get to a user.
Found a hash but wasn’t able to crack it. Am I missing something else or am I just too bad at cracking ? :slight_smile:

Struggling to make progress. Ive tried sql injection on the webpages but made no progress. Ive run nikto and ffuf looking for subdomains. Im going to try the non webport next

rooted

thanks to @zweeden

Whew! Got user and root :smile: a huge thanks to @zweeden for the gentle nudges in the right direction. Didn’t give the whole answer, but just helped refocus my efforts when I was spinning my wheels.

The beginning e.g. gaining a foothold I would consider easy difficulty, however I think overall this box should be considered more towards medium difficulty. Not necessarily because it requires any intermediate knowledge on exploits or techniques, but beginners typically struggle the most with enumeration TTP’s more than anything. I know I struggled the most at this stage on this box, there is just so much to go through at every sub-stage of enumeration here.

Tips for anyone who is completely stuck:

  • Gaining a foothold: this can really be considered two parts. For the web application side, think about how simple it might be to change a certain value so that you can become someone with particular privileges… Once you do that, don’t forget the basics about DNS. As @whitewhale mentioned, you need to identify when you find a red herring – MOVE ON if you are spinning your wheels on a particular finding. If you make it that far, remember to always google application names when you discover something you might not be familiar with. You can see from the machine statistics graph that this is rated very high in well documented exploits.

  • User: As everyone else mentioned, enumeration is key. Understand where particular credentials might be stored that you can see as the current particular user (when you gain a foothold). Google how to recursively grep in files, you will need this now and later! Remember that people are creatures of habit, especially with passwords…

  • Root: This was really the hardest part for me. If you are not good at enumeration, now is your time to get better. First thing you should always check is who you belong to and what powers and access that gives you. There is SO much to go through, you need to think about how you can use grep or other ways of filtering out the “noise” so you can find particularly interesting entries. Remember that if you pipe into less you can search for regular expressions with /. Use this to build up a repertoire of expressions that you can grep. Also remember that lateral movement is important! “You” might not be able to do something, but you might be able to figure if someone else can… Once you progress, if you are struggling with privesc techniques on a Linux system, OverTheWire’s “Leviathan” wargame can seriously give you some good ideas here.

Rooted!
Nice box, really nice box.
Foothold: Check all your posts and gain admin, then search what can you do to gain RCE from the second part (you will know when you will find it)
User: read every file
Lateral movement: You can read something. Find what and read them all (or grep/bash fu)
Root: This is easy, now gtfo