Official Laboratory Discussion

Long time lurker here.

I’ve been working boxes here for almost a year and I have to say, the initial foothold and getting to user on this one does not warrant an easy rating on this box. It’s intermediate at the very least.

That being said, I will say, if your attack VM is robust, the D****r route for GL will make your life easier.

Although it was a bunch of hoops, this was a fun box and I recommend this one for everyone.

I am on the verge of getting the foothold but struggling with msf. I could really use a nudge from anyone. I can explain what I have found in a PM.

Thank you in advance.

Rooted.
Thank you @Tazwake for the last nudge I needed :slight_smile:

For people struggling with foothold (msf) is your friend for easy win.

One of my main challenges with this was my own environment. My SSH connection kept dropping but eventually resolved it by switching from UDP to TCP.
Did anyone else have issues with the connectivity to the box once being inside it?

Finally! What a journey.

I’m curious with how others have gained foothold. I didn’t set up a similar environment as the box. Hope to share thinking processes and paths taken with others via PM.

Foothold
You probably found something interesting but cannot get RCE. Halt the exploit a step at a time to see where it is being sent.

User
You have powers to change something important to others without any prior knowledge. Noisy PE-aS can help you.

Root
Find something with special powers. You can look inside and Trace what it does. Look carefully and then literally get in its WAY.

This is no means an easy box! The sooner you realise this, the less you will feel deflated when you go through each stage. Don’t give up. PM me if you need some nudges.

Very glad that the foothold has been scripted out a tough one for an easy box!

Finally rooted… feeling devastated though.
This is probably the hardest Medium box I have ever done and yet it is rated Easy… you really have to think and try lot of things if you have no earlier experience with the techniques used in this box

I am wondering did anyone done the root hacking the shared libraries?
(There’s a simpler way but still)

Fun box thus far

Awesome box, very challenging ping me for nudges

Hey guys,

Anyone faced “Exploit failed: NameError uninitialized constant Rex::Version” in msf? It was working fine yesterday but today i am getting this!

Any idea on this is appreciated

EDIT : found a workaround it… but not sure why it happened!

Spoiler Removed

when I used the POC for G***** in rails, my kali tell a error sh: 1: Syntax error: Bad fd number
, someone can tell me why plz, PM me ,thx

Great box thanks @0xc4afe ! For those talking about resetting the box and updating the default user accounts, there is no need, you can power yourself up to find the secret sauce, just follow the chugga chugga, chugga chugga, choo choo.

I’ve read a few other write ups since owning and there is definitely an easy and hard way to get the foothold, which for sure takes it from an Easy to Medium box, I’d be interested to know which was “intended”.

PM me for hints

Hi, I’m stuck at G***** page, can anyone give me any hints to get foothold, user credentials ? >:(

Type your comment> @quangvo said:

Hi, I’m stuck at G***** page, can anyone give me any hints to get foothold, user credentials ? >:(

Just enumerate some more on the page. Look for what you can do on the G***** page… And if you have access, find that important number to enumerate more information about the G*****

Got stuck in the process, can anyone give me a nudge in the right direction?

  1. Found the G***** page
  2. Started a reverse shell via g*****_***.py
  3. Got a user g++ (added the plus instead of *, cause it changed it to bold)
  4. Found out i’m in a c***r (probably dr)
  5. Looked for the manual online for G*****
  6. Found a user d***** with a command, the connection lost again
  7. Started a new reverse shell via g*****_***.py
  8. Tried to follow the instructions to G***** D++s Sy - H++ 2 r+++t **** pd (used the + symbol instead of * because of the markdown bold and italic options)
  9. Did not get any feedback after following the instruction from the official documentation as mentioned in step 8…

So I was thinking, my reverse shell is not correct, or I am doing something wrong with following the instruction from the official documentation. Or another way is there to break out the freaking thing

I got stuck here, can anyone help me to move forward ?

  1. I got reverse shell with g** user
  2. Found out that I am in a dumb shell (I tried to upgrade it to an interactive shell but haven’t had any luck)
  3. g*****-**** console didn’t give anything back but Switch to inspect mode

So I was thinking because of the shell I got was a dumb shell so I cannot access to the console ??. And the reverse shell is highly unstable, every time I execute some specific command it always return 502 status code for me.

Is anyone else having constant 502 in the g***** page?

@kyichu said:

Is anyone else having constant 502 in the g***** page?

I think it is fairly common. It has been mentioned loads of times in this thread. The general tip is wait for a bit and if it feels “too” long, report it to HTB.

thanks for this box. This was really interesting and I was struggling in the first attempt with foothold to get user. After I started to review my notes after some days I was clear about the path to move forward :slight_smile: Afterwards I was kicking my ■■■ since I was already at 99% before I gave up :wink:

Enumeration is key on this box. Anything else is already there if you use latest Kali. No need to use additional tools, scripts, etc. at all (except one to maybe simplify/automate your enumeration ;-)).

Oof. That was a fun, definitely learnt a few things. Need to go back and understand how the foothold was actually gained though, as I just used something out-of-the-box from msf.

Foothold - As others have said - enumerate lots, check software versions for known vulns, google. I spent a long time staring at that main website because I forgot to do a certain type of enumeration, but fuzzed my way there in the end.

User - Not sure whether I did this the right way, but this took me the longest time by far. Once you have a foothold, try to find out ‘where you actually are’. Once you understand that, just have a look around. An old enumeration script ended up pointing me in the right (?) direction.

Root - Again, enumerate, you’ll find something interesting.

Can’t say I had any of the problems with 502’s I’m seeing people talk about though