Tag Certipy

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: Fries Machine Walkthrough – Hard Difficulty

Just wrapped up another Hack The Box machine: Fries (Hard).

TThis machine provided a realistic attack path that started with source code review in Gitea, where leaked credentials in a Git commit led to authenticated PostgreSQL RCE through pgAdmin. From there, I pivoted through the internal Docker network using Ligolo-ng, abused an exposed NFS share and debugfs to gain host access, then exploited PWM configuration weaknesses to capture LDAP credentials. The final stage involved Active Directory enumeration and AD CS (ESC6/ESC7) abuse to obtain an administrator certificate and compromise the domain. A great lab for practising web exploitation, Docker security, Linux privilege escalation, internal pivoting, and Active Directory attacks.

#HackTheBox #HTB #CyberSecurity #PenetrationTesting #RedTeam #ActiveDirectory #ADCS #Docker #Ligolo #PostgreSQL #Gitea #EthicalHacking #Writeup #CTF

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: 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: Tombwatcher Machine Walkthrough – Medium Difficulty

I cracked a Kerberos TGS for Alfred (password: basketballl), used BloodHound-guided enumeration and account takeover to obtain John’s machine credentials and retrieved the user flag (type user.txt); then I abused a misconfigured certificate template (ESC15) with Certipy to request an Administrator certificate, obtained a TGT (administrator.ccache), extracted the Administrator NT hash and used it to access the DC and read the root flag (type root.txt).

#HackTheBox #RedTeam #ActiveDirectory #Kerberos #CertAuth #BloodHound #OffensiveSecurity #Infosec #PrivilegeEscalation

Hack The Box: Certificate Machine Walkthrough – Hard Difficulty

I recently completed the "Certificate" challenge on Hack The Box: after extracting and cracking a captured authentication hash I gained access to a user account (lion.sk) and retrieved the user flag, then progressed to full system compromise by responsibly exploiting weak certificate‑based authentication controls—obtaining and converting certificate material into elevated credentials to capture the root flag. The exercise reinforced how misconfigurations in certificate services and poor time synchronization can create powerful escalation paths, and highlighted the importance of least‑privilege, strict enrollment policies, and monitoring certificate issuance. Great hands‑on reminder that defensive hygiene around PKI and identity services matters.

#CyberSecurity #HTB #Infosec #ADCS #Certificates #PrivilegeEscalation #RedTeam #Pentesting

Hack The Box: Scepter Machine Walkthrough – Hard Difficulty

I conquered the "Scepter" machine on Hack The Box, a challenging Active Directory exploit! Initially, I cracked weak .pfx certificate passwords using pfx2john and rockyou.txt. After syncing time, I extracted D.BAKER’s NTLM hash via Certipy and used BloodHound to reveal A.CARTER’s password reset privileges, exploiting ESC9 to capture the user flag. Subsequently, H.BROWN’s access to P.ADAMS’s altSecurityIdentities enabled an ESC14 attack, forging a certificate for passwordless authentication. Consequently, P.ADAMS’s DCSync rights allowed domain hash extraction, securing the root flag via Evil-WinRM.

#Cybersecurity #HackTheBox #ActiveDirectory #PrivilegeEscalation #CTF #EthicalHacking

Hack The Box: Haze Machine Walkthrough – Hard Difficulty

New Write-Up Published: Haze [Medium | Windows | Active Directory] – Hack The Box

Just released a walkthrough for Haze, a medium-difficulty Windows machine on Hack The Box. Initial access was obtained by exploiting CVE-2024-36991, a local file inclusion vulnerability in Splunk, to extract LDAP credentials. This enabled a Shadow Credentials attack using PyWhisker and Certipy, allowing lateral movement to a high-privileged domain user. For privilege escalation, I utilized Splunk admin access to deploy a reverse shell via a crafted app package. Upon gaining shell access, I escalated privileges to NT SYSTEM by abusing SeImpersonatePrivilege with SweetPotato. This box offers great insight into chained Active Directory abuse and Splunk misconfigurations.

#HackTheBox #RedTeam #ActiveDirectory #Splunk #CVE202436991 #ShadowCredentials #PrivilegeEscalation #SweetPotato #CTF #InfoSec #WriteUp #CyberSecurity

Hack The Box: Inflitrator Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulity

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