Tag bloodyAD

Hack The Box: Garfield Machine Walkthrough – Hard Difficulity

Just wrapped up the Hard-difficulty “Garfield” machine on Hack The Box which a really enjoyable Active Directory challenge.

The box starts with low-privilege domain credentials and requires solid enumeration to identify interesting attack paths. From there it moves into abusing writable attributes for initial code execution, pivoting through an internal network, and eventually targeting a read-only domain controller. The privilege escalation path involves computer account creation, resource-based constrained delegation, extraction of RODC-specific Kerberos material, and forging a golden ticket to achieve Domain Admin.

It was great practice for real-world AD red teaming techniques, especially around RODCs, Kerberos ticket manipulation, and modern delegation attacks. Highly recommend it if you’re looking to sharpen your Active Directory skills.

#HackTheBox #HTB #ActiveDirectory #RedTeam #CyberSecurity #PenetrationTesting #Kerberos #RODC #GoldenTicket #InfoSec

Hack The Box: Checkpoint Machine Walkthrough Medium Difficulty

Just finished the Checkpoint machine on Hack The Box (Medium difficulty) and it was a really enjoyable Active Directory box with some modern and creative attack paths.

I started with the provided credentials for `alex.turner`. After some enumeration I discovered that a previously deleted account (`mark.davies`) could be restored and that this account had write access to a share called DevDrop. This share was used by the organisation to stage VS Code extensions.

By creating a malicious VSIX extension targeting VS Code engine version 1.118.0 and dropping it on the share, a scheduled task automatically installed the extension and gave me a reverse shell as `ryan.brooks`. This was a really clean example of abusing enterprise software deployment processes.

From the `ryan.brooks` foothold I used Rubeus to obtain a TGT, then leveraged bloodyAD to create a malicious dMSA under a writable OU and impersonated a higher-privileged account. This eventually granted access to a VMBackups share containing a Windows Server memory dump. Using Volatility I extracted the local Administrator NTLM hash from the dump, authenticated with Evil-WinRM, and captured the root flag.

Overall, Checkpoint does a great job of chaining together several current techniques: writable shares for extension abuse, deleted object restoration, dMSA abuse, and memory forensics. It’s a solid Medium box that feels realistic and rewards careful enumeration.

Would recommend it to anyone working on modern Windows / Active Directory attack paths.

#HackTheBox #CyberSecurity #PenetrationTesting #ActiveDirectory #RedTeam #HTB #InfoSec #WindowsSecurity #PrivilegeEscalation #Kerberos #MemoryForensics

Hack The Box: Hercules Machine Walkthrough – Insane Diffucility

Completed another Hack The Box machine: Hercules, an Insane difficulty Active Directory challenge.

This was one of the longer attack chains I have worked through, involving multiple stages across web exploitation, credential access, Active Directory enumeration, privilege escalation, AD CS, and Kerberos abuse.

The initial foothold started with LDAP username enumeration and the discovery of credentials stored in an account description. After gaining access to the Hercules Portal, a directory traversal vulnerability exposed the web.config file and its ASP.NET machineKey values. These values allowed a forged Forms Authentication cookie to impersonate web_admin.

From there, a malicious ODT upload triggered an outbound NTLM authentication attempt, allowing the NetNTLMv2 credentials for natalie.a to be captured and cracked. The recovered credentials opened the path to Shadow Credentials against bob.w and stephen.m, followed by OU permission abuse to gain control of the Auditor account.

The privilege escalation chain continued through the Forest Migration OU, where fernando.r was enabled and used to identify an ESC3 misconfiguration. An Enrollment Agent certificate was then obtained and abused to request a certificate for ashley.b, leading to further access within the domain.

The final stages involved controlling IIS_Administrator, taking control of the iis_webserver$ machine account, extracting the required Kerberos session key, and abusing S4U2self/S4U2proxy to impersonate Administrator. This ultimately provided access to the root flag under C:\Users\Admin\Desktop.

Hercules was a great exercise in chaining several seemingly separate weaknesses together rather than relying on a single vulnerability. Definitely a box that required careful enumeration and keeping track of the relationships between users, groups, OUs, certificates, and Kerberos tickets.

Documented as part of my continued HTB practice and learning in Active Directory and offensive security.

#HackTheBox #HTB #Hercules #CyberSecurity #ActiveDirectory #PenetrationTesting #RedTeam #OffensiveSecurity #BloodHound #Certipy #ADCS #ESC3 #Kerberos #ShadowCredentials #PrivilegeEscalation #InfoSec #CyberSecurityLearning

Hack The Box: Pirate Machine Walkthrough – Hard Difficulity

Completed the Hack The Box “Pirate” machine, a hard-difficulty Active Directory challenge that required chaining multiple attack paths rather than relying on a single vulnerability.

The enumeration phase uncovered domain users, pre-created computer accounts, GMSAs, delegation relationships, and an exposed internal network. Access to gMSA_ADFS_prod$ led to DC01 and enabled an internal pivot to WEB01. From there, the attack chain involved GMSA credential retrieval, NTLM relay, authentication coercion, shadow credentials, certificate-based authentication, and Kerberos ticket abuse.

The privilege escalation path continued through constrained delegation and resource-based constrained delegation. Kerberos ticket manipulation ultimately provided Administrator access to the domain controller, followed by a SYSTEM-level shell and extraction of domain credentials from NTDS.dit. Both the user and root flags were successfully obtained.

Another challenging AD machine completed and another deep dive into Windows authentication, delegation, and privilege escalation.

#HackTheBox #HTB #CyberSecurity #PenetrationTesting #ActiveDirectory #RedTeam #Kerberos #NTLMRelay #ShadowCredentials #GMSA #PrivilegeEscalation #WindowsSecurity #Cybersecurity #Infosec #HTBWriteup

Hack The Box: Logging Machine Walkthrough – Medium Difficulty

Completed another Hack The Box machine focused on Active Directory exploitation and privilege escalation.

The attack involved SMB enumeration, credential discovery through log analysis, Kerberos authentication, Shadow Credentials abuse, and DLL hijacking to gain user-level access. Further enumeration revealed a WSUS infrastructure weakness, allowing exploitation through Kerberos delegation abuse, certificate-based authentication, and a WSUS machine-in-the-middle attack to achieve Domain Admin privileges. This challenge strengthened my understanding of modern AD attack paths, Kerberos abuse techniques, and enterprise infrastructure security.

#HackTheBox #HTB #CyberSecurity #ActiveDirectory #RedTeam #PenetrationTesting #OffensiveSecurity #EthicalHacking #InfoSec

Hack The Box: Nanocorp Machine Walkhtrough – Hard Difficulity

We completed the “Nanocorp” Active Directory lab on Hack The Box, covering full chain exploitation from initial access to domain compromise.

User access was achieved by exploiting a ZIP extraction flaw in a recruitment portal, leading to NTLM hash capture via a malicious .library-ms file and credential recovery for web_svc. Active Directory misconfigurations allowed privilege escalation to monitoring_svc through BloodHound-guided abuse of ForceChangePassword rights.

Root access was obtained after enumerating CheckMK Agent 2.1 on the Domain Controller. A web shell enabled command execution as web_svc, followed by exploitation of the CheckMK MSI repair process (CVE-2024-0670) using RunasCs to achieve SYSTEM-level access.

#HackTheBox #ActiveDirectory #Pentesting #RedTeam #PrivilegeEscalation #CyberSecurity #WindowsDomain #BloodHound

Hack The Box: Overwatch Machine Walkthrough- Medium Difficulity

Just completed "Overwatch" — Medium difficulty machine on Hack The Box! ✅

This Windows AD environment provided an excellent learning experience combining reconnaissance, service enumeration, and creative privilege escalation techniques.

After gaining initial access via a low-privileged service account and securing a stable WinRM shell, post-exploitation enumeration quickly led to the first flag on the user’s desktop.

For privilege escalation, I focused on an internally exposed service that contained a dangerous command injection vulnerability. By exploiting this flaw, I was able to create a new administrator account, elevate my privileges, and eventually compromise the Administrator user — granting full system control and allowing retrieval of the final flag.

Really enjoyed the logical flow and the clever abuse of internal services in this box!

#HackTheBox #HTB #PenetrationTesting #CyberSecurity #EthicalHacking #ActiveDirectory #PrivilegeEscalation #RedTeam #Infosec

Hack The Box: Mirage Machine Walkthrough – Hard Difficulity

Compromising the Mirage domain started with a simple clue hidden in an exposed NFS share. Inside a PDF report was a missing DNS record—just enough to pivot. By hijacking the DNS entry, I intercepted NATS JetStream traffic and captured real authentication logs, including valid credentials. After fixing the system time and obtaining a Kerberos TGT, I gained my first foothold on the domain controller and captured the user flag.

From there, the path to domain dominance unfolded through Active Directory weaknesses. An SPN ticket leak led to a cracked password, which opened the door to BloodHound reconnaissance and more credentials. I reset a disabled user’s password, extracted a service account’s managed password, and used Certipy to transform certificate abuse into full machine-level impersonation. With Resource-Based Constrained Delegation enabled, I forged Kerberos tickets, dumped every domain hash, and finally authenticated as Administrator—securing the root flag.

#CyberSecurity #PenetrationTesting #Kerberos #ActiveDirectory #RedTeam #HackTheBox #Infosec #PrivilegeEscalation

Hack The Box: RustyKey Machine Walkthrough – Hard Difficulity

Authenticated to rustykey.htb as bb.morgan after exploiting Kerberos flows and resolving a time sync issue: obtained a TGT (bb.morgan.ccache), set KRB5CCNAME, and used evil‑winrm to capture the user flag.
Escalated to SYSTEM by abusing machine account and delegation: IT‑COMPUTER3$ was used to modify AD protections and reset ee.reed’s password, S4U2Self/S4U2Proxy impersonation produced backupadmin.ccache, and Impacket was used to deploy a service payload to achieve a SYSTEM shell and capture the root flag.

#CyberSecurity #RedTeam #Kerberos #ActiveDirectory #PrivilegeEscalation #HackTheBox #Impacket #WindowsAD

Hack The Box: Voleur Machinen Walkthrough – Medium Difficulty

Cracked a password-protected Excel on an SMB share to recover service-account credentials, used Kerberos to access a user account and capture user.txt, then leveraged AD write permissions to restore a deleted admin, decrypt DPAPI artefacts for high‑priv creds, and access the DC to grab root.txt.

#HackTheBox #ADSecurity #Kerberos #DPAPI #RedTeam #CTF