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    Monthly Archives: March 2026

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    28 Mar, 2026
    Hack The Box: Browsed Machine Walkthrough – Medium Diffucility
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    Completed the Browsed machine on Hack The Box 🚀

    Gained initial access by uploading a malicious Chrome extension with a reverse shell payload. Automated testing executed it, giving a foothold as larry and access to user flag.

    Escalated privileges by abusing a misconfigured sudo rule on extension_tool.py. A world-writable pycache directory allowed bytecode poisoning, leading to root access and full compromise.

    Great box for practicing client-side attacks, extension abuse, and privilege escalation via Python internals.

    #HackTheBox #CyberSecurity #EthicalHacking #PenetrationTesting #RedTeam #PrivilegeEscalation #WebSecurity #CTF …

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    21 Mar, 2026
    Hack The Box: Conversor Machine Walkhtrough – Easy Difficulity
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    Successfully completed the Conversor machine on Hack The Box, focusing on web exploitation and privilege escalation techniques.

    For the user flag, initial access was gained by exploiting an insecure XSLT file upload feature. By leveraging EXSLT, I was able to write and execute a malicious script on the server, resulting in a reverse shell as a low-privileged user. Further enumeration uncovered a SQLite database containing hashed credentials, which were cracked to obtain valid SSH access and retrieve the user flag.

    For the root flag, privilege escalation was achieved through a misconfigured sudo permission allowing execution of needrestart. This was abused to run a crafted script that modified system binaries, ultimately granting root-level access via a SUID bash shell and completing the machine.

    #HackTheBox #CyberSecurity #EthicalHacking #PenetrationTesting #WebSecurity #PrivilegeEscalation #RedTeam #InfoSec #CaptureTheFlag #CTF …

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    14 Mar, 2026
    Hack The Box: Gavel Machine Walkthrough – Medium Difficulity
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    Completed the Gavel (Medium) machine on Hack The Box. The initial foothold came from an exposed .git directory that leaked the application’s source code and bcrypt password hashes. After cracking the credentials with John the Ripper, I gained access and achieved a reverse shell through command injection in the admin rule field. Reusing the cracked credentials allowed privilege escalation to the application user and retrieval of the user flag.

    Root access was obtained by abusing the gavel-util submission feature, which executed YAML rule fields using PHP system(). By overwriting the custom php.ini to remove restrictions and creating a SUID Bash binary, it was possible to spawn a root shell and capture the final flag.

    #HackTheBox #HTB #CyberSecurity #EthicalHacking #PenetrationTesting #RedTeam #LinuxSecurity #WebSecurity #PrivilegeEscalation #CTF …

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    7 Mar, 2026
    Hack The Box: Expressway Machine – Easy Difficulity
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    Just completed Expressway on Hack The Box (Easy difficulty) – a solid box that blends weak IKE PSK cracking with a straightforward sudo privilege escalation!
    Enumeration started with UDP scanning, which revealed ISAKMP on port 500. I ran ike-scan in Aggressive Mode to leak the peer identity ike@expressway.htb and capture crackable parameters. Next I used psk-crack against rockyou.txt and recovered the PSK freakingrockstarontheroad in under 13 seconds. I logged in via SSH as ike using that password and quickly grabbed user.txt.

    For privilege escalation, sudo -l confirmed no rights for the ike user. Checking sudo -V showed version 1.9.17 vulnerable to CVE-2025-32463 (chwoot). I cloned the PoC repository on my attack machine, hosted sudo-chwoot.sh with a Python HTTP server, transferred it to the target using curl, made it executable, and ran it. The script printed “woot!” and dropped an instant root shell. From there I read root.txt.
    Nice and clean chain: weak PSK for initial access followed by a known sudo vulnerability for root. Perfect easy box to sharpen IKE enumeration and Linux local exploitation skills.

    #HackTheBox #CTF #PenetrationTesting #Cybersecurity #EthicalHacking #IKE #PSKCracking #PrivilegeEscalation #LinuxExploitation #CVE202532463 #RedTeam …

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