Insane Machine Archives - Threatninja.net

13 Dec, 2025

Hack The Box: WhiteRabbit Machine Walkthough – Insane Difficulity

Insane Machine 7zip, Authentication Bypass, BurpSuite, Challenges, ffuf, ghidra, gobuster, HackTheBox, Linux, n8n, neo-password-generator, Penetration Testing, python3, restic, SQL Injection, ssh, Uptime Kuma, webhook

Initial access was achieved through exposed monitoring and documentation services, which leaked internal service names and an unauthenticated workflow configuration. This disclosure revealed sensitive secrets, a vulnerable webhook parameter, and ultimately credentials for a backup system. Abuse of misconfigured backup tooling and sudo privileges allowed extraction of private SSH keys, enabling lateral movement across multiple user accounts and retrieval of the user flag.

Privilege escalation to root involved reverse-engineering a custom SUID binary. Analysis exposed a predictable pseudorandom password generator caused by unsafe seeding logic and an integer overflow, significantly reducing entropy. Recreating the binary locally and brute-forcing the constrained seed space yielded valid credentials, granting SSH access to a privileged user with unrestricted sudo rights and full system compromise.

This machine was a strong example of how exposed internal tooling, poor secret handling, and flawed custom binaries can combine into a complete attack chain.

#HackTheBox #CyberSecurity #OffensiveSecurity #PenetrationTesting #RedTeam #PrivilegeEscalation #ReverseEngineering #LinuxSecurity #Infosec #CTF …

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18 Oct, 2025

Hack The Box: DarkCorp Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulity

Insane Machine BloodHoundCE, bloodyAD, BurpSuite, Challenges, evil-winrm, HackTheBox, hashcat, impacket, NetExec, Penetration Testing, sharpdpapi, ssh, Windows

Finished the Insane-level DarkCorp box on Hack The Box. Initial foothold came from registering on a webmail portal and abusing a contact form to deliver a payload that resulted in a reverse shell. From there I enumerated the app and DB, identified SQL injection and extracted hashes (cracked one to thePlague61780), recovered DPAPI master key material and additional credentials (Pack_beneath_Solid9!), and used those artifacts to escalate to root and retrieve root.txt. Valuable practice in web vectors, SQLi exploitation, credential harvesting, DPAPI analysis, and Windows privilege escalation. Happy to share high-level notes or mitigations.

#HackTheBox #Infosec #RedTeam #Pentesting #WindowsSecurity #CredentialHunting #CTF …

Learn MoreHack The Box: DarkCorp Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulity

9 Aug, 2025

Hack The Box: University Machine Walkthrough – Insane Walkthrough

Insane Machine Bloodhound, BurpSuite, Challenges, CVE-2023-33733, evil-winrm, HackTheBox, LocalPotato, Penetration Testing, python3, ssh, SSH key, Windows

Compromised university.htb by exploiting ReportLab RCE (CVE-2023-33733) to gain initial access as wao. Forged a professor certificate to impersonate george, then uploaded a malicious lecture to compromise Martin.T.

Escalated privileges by exploiting a scheduled task with a malicious .url file, used LocalPotato (CVE-2023-21746) for elevation on WS-3, and abused SeBackupPrivilege to extract NTDS.dit, ultimately retrieving Domain Admin credentials.

🔍 A great hands-on challenge combining web exploitation, privilege escalation, and Active Directory abuse.

#CyberSecurity #RedTeam #CTF #PrivilegeEscalation #HTB #InfoSec #WindowsExploitation #PenetrationTesting #EthicalHacking #HackTheBox …

Learn MoreHack The Box: University Machine Walkthrough – Insane Walkthrough

14 Jun, 2025

Hack The Box: Inflitrator Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulity

Insane Machine bitlocker, Bloodhound, BloodHoundCE, bloodyAD, BurpSuite, Certipy, Challenges, evil-winrm, HackTheBox, hashcat, impacket, john the ripper, kerbrute, Output Messenger, Penetration Testing, RDP, sqlite3, Windows, Wireshark

Successfully completed a two-stage Active Directory exploitation scenario involving both user access and privilege escalation. The first stage focused on identifying accounts that did not require Kerberos pre-authentication (AS-REP Roasting), allowing extraction and cracking of a user password hash to gain remote access and retrieve the user flag. In the second stage, a misconfigured certificate template (ESC4 vulnerability) within Active Directory Certificate Services was exploited to request a certificate impersonating a privileged user. This enabled full administrative access and retrieval of the root flag.

#CyberSecurity #ActiveDirectory #RedTeam #Kerberos #PrivilegeEscalation #ASREP #ADCS #ESC4 #PenetrationTesting #Infosec #HackTheBox #WindowsSecurity #CTF
Successfully completed a two-stage Active Directory exploitation scenario involving both user access and privilege escalation. The first stage focused on identifying accounts that did not require Kerberos pre-authentication (AS-REP Roasting), allowing extraction and cracking of a user password hash to gain remote access and retrieve the user flag. In the second stage, a misconfigured certificate template (ESC4 vulnerability) within Active Directory Certificate Services was exploited to request a certificate impersonating a privileged user. This enabled full administrative access and retrieval of the root flag.

#CyberSecurity #ActiveDirectory #RedTeam #Kerberos #PrivilegeEscalation #ASREP #ADCS #ESC4 #PenetrationTesting #Infosec #HackTheBox #WindowsSecurity #CTF
…

Learn MoreHack The Box: Inflitrator Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulity

5 Apr, 2025

Hack The Box: Ghost Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulty

Insane Machine adfs abuse attack, ADFSDump, ADFSSpoof, Bloodhound, BloodHoundCE, BurpSuite, Challenges, command injection, docker, efspotatoo, evil-winrm, Gitea, HackTheBox, hashcat, JokerShell, kerberos, LFI, Linux, mimkatz, Penetration Testing, responder, rubeus.exe, SQL, ssh

The initial foothold was gained by exploiting command injection on intranet.ghost.htb:8008/api-dev/scan/, which provided a reverse shell inside a Docker container. From there, I enumerated the environment and discovered credentials that allowed SSH access as Florence Ramirez. By extracting and converting a Kerberos ticket, I authenticated as a legitimate user, escalating access within the system. With access to the Windows environment, I retrieved NTLM hashes for the adfs_gmsa account and leveraged evil-winrm for lateral movement. A reverse shell was established using JokerShell, and privileges were escalated by enabling xp_cmdshell through a debug interface. After uploading EfsPotato.cs and disabling antivirus, I used Mimikatz and Rubeus.exe to dump credentials, ultimately achieving SYSTEM access. This led to the extraction of domain admin credentials and the retrieval of the root flag. Another Insane box down! 💀💻

#HackTheBox #RedTeam #CyberSecurity #PenTesting #PrivilegeEscalation #EthicalHacking …

Learn MoreHack The Box: Ghost Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulty

8 Feb, 2025

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Hack The Box: WhiteRabbit Machine Walkthough – Insane Difficulity

Hack The Box: DarkCorp Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulity

Hack The Box: University Machine Walkthrough – Insane Walkthrough

Hack The Box: Inflitrator Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulity

Hack The Box: Ghost Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulty

HackTheBox:MagicGardens Machine Walkthrough-Insane Difficulty

Hack The Box: Mist Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulty

Hack The Box – Skyfall Machine Walkthrough (Insane Difficulty)

Hack The Box: Corporate Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulty

Hack The Box: Ouija Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulty

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Category Archives: Insane Machine