Tag Penetration Testing

HackTheBox: CobbleStone Machine Walkthrough – Insane Difficulty

Completed the Hack The Box “CobbleStone” Insane machine, chaining multiple vulnerabilities to achieve full system compromise.

Initial access was achieved through SSRF in the skin suggestion feature, followed by SQL injection and stored XSS to compromise the administrator’s session. The stolen session cookie provided admin access, leading to Twig SSTI and RCE as www-data. Database credentials recovered through SSTI enabled a database dump and password cracking, resulting in SSH access as cobble and the user flag.

Local enumeration revealed Cobbler’s XML-RPC service on port 25151. After identifying Cobbler 3.3.6 as vulnerable to CVE-2024-47533, a malicious Cheetah template was used to execute commands with root privileges. This provided a root shell and access to /root/root.txt.

#HackTheBox #HTB #CobbleStone #CyberSecurity #PenetrationTesting #OffensiveSecurity #WebSecurity #SSRF #SQLInjection #XSS #SSTI #PrivilegeEscalation #CVE-2024-47533

Hack The Box: Kobold Machine Walkthrough – Easy Difficulty

Completed the Hack The Box "Kobold" machine, an easy-difficulty Linux challenge focused on web exploitation and container-based privilege escalation.

The assessment involved identifying and exploiting an unauthenticated Remote Code Execution vulnerability (CVE-2026-23744) in MCPJam Inspector to gain initial access as the ben user. During the privilege escalation phase, I explored Docker security weaknesses by leveraging excessive group permissions to escape the container environment and obtain root access. Additionally, I analyzed an alternative attack path involving CVE-2025-64714 in PrivateBin, which allowed sensitive configuration data exposure and access to the Arcane container management interface. This machine provided practical experience in vulnerability exploitation, container security assessment, and identifying risks associated with exposed internal services.

#HackTheBox #HTB #CyberSecurity #PenetrationTesting #OffensiveSecurity #RedTeam #Linux #Docker #VulnerabilityManagement #CVE #EthicalHacking #CybersecurityLearning

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: DevArea Machine Walkthrough – Medium Difficulty

Just completed the DevArea machine from Hack The Box!

After exploiting a vulnerable Java SOAP service on port 8080, I gained initial access and discovered Hoverfly running on port 8888. Leveraging CVE-2025-54123, I successfully authenticated and delivered a reverse shell, securing the User flag as the dev_ryan user.

For privilege escalation, I took advantage of a sudo permission on the SysWatch management script. By exploiting a symlink attack in the logging functionality, I was able to read /root/root.txt and capture the Root flag.

Really enjoyed this Medium-difficulty box — great mix of Java deserialization/SOAP, API exploitation, and creative Linux privilege escalation!

#HackTheBox #HTB #PenetrationTesting #CyberSecurity #PrivilegeEscalation #CVE #EthicalHacking

Hack The Box: Wingdata Machine Walkthrough – Easy Difficulty

I recently completed the Wingdata machine on Hack The Box! This easy-rated challenge involved exploiting an unauthenticated command injection vulnerability (CVE-2025-47812) in the Wing FTP Server web client to gain initial access as the wingftp user. After enumerating the system and cracking a SHA-256 password hash from a user configuration file using Hashcat, I escalated to the wacky user.

Finally, I leveraged a vulnerable Python backup restoration script by injecting a malicious tarball containing my SSH public key, achieving full root access. A great box for practicing web application exploitation, password cracking, and creative privilege escalation techniques.

#HackTheBox #PenetrationTesting #CyberSecurity #EthicalHacking #PrivilegeEscalation

Hack The Box: Abducted Machine Walkthrough – Medium Difficulty

Recently completed the Abducted machine from Hack The Box, a Medium-difficulty challenge that combined SMB enumeration, Samba exploitation, credential discovery, lateral movement, and Linux privilege escalation techniques.

The path to user access involved enumerating SMB shares and anonymous RPC services before exploiting a vulnerable Samba printer configuration to gain an initial foothold. Further enumeration revealed backup credentials stored within an Rclone configuration file, which were decrypted and reused to obtain access as a legitimate user. From there, a misconfigured Samba share enabled lateral movement to another account, ultimately leading to a systemd-based privilege escalation path and root access.

This machine provided valuable practice in chaining multiple weaknesses together and demonstrated how exposed credentials, insecure service configurations, and share misconfigurations can collectively lead to full system compromise.

Key takeaways:
✅ SMB and RPC enumeration can reveal valuable attack paths
✅ Exposed credentials often provide opportunities for lateral movement
✅ Misconfigured Samba shares can introduce serious security risks
✅ Service configuration weaknesses can lead to privilege escalation
✅ Small misconfigurations can be chained into complete system compromise

#CyberSecurity #EthicalHacking #PenetrationTesting #PrivilegeEscalation #RedTeam #LinuxSecurity #SMB #Samba #CTF #HackTheBox #InfoSec #SecurityResearch

Hack The Box – VariaType Machine Walkthrough Medium Difficulty

Recently completed a Medium-difficulty machine that combined web exploitation, file-processing abuse, and privilege escalation techniques.

The path to user access involved leveraging a vulnerable backend font-processing workflow and a ZIP-based exploitation chain to obtain a reverse shell and pivot to a legitimate user account. From there, further enumeration uncovered a misconfigured sudo rule that allowed privilege escalation to root through a Python-based validation script.

This machine provided valuable practice in identifying attack paths, chaining vulnerabilities, and understanding how seemingly minor misconfigurations can lead to full system compromise.

Key takeaways:
✅ Thorough enumeration is critical
✅ File-processing functionality can introduce unexpected attack surfaces
✅ Misconfigured sudo permissions remain a common privilege-escalation vector

#CyberSecurity #EthicalHacking #PenetrationTesting #PrivilegeEscalation #RedTeam #LinuxSecurity #CTF #HackTheBox #InfoSec #SecurityResearch

Hack The Box: Facts Machine Walkthrough – Easy Difficulty

Completed the Facts machine from Hack The Box, an easy-rated Linux challenge that combined web exploitation, cloud storage enumeration, SSH key recovery, and privilege escalation.

The initial foothold came from exploiting CVE-2025-2304, a mass assignment vulnerability in Camaleon CMS 2.9.0, which allowed privilege escalation from a low-privileged user to administrator. Access to the administration panel exposed S3 configuration details and credentials, leading to enumeration of an internal bucket containing an encrypted SSH private key. After recovering the key's passphrase with John the Ripper, SSH access as the trivia user was obtained.

Privilege escalation to root involved abusing facter, a Ruby-based utility executable via sudo without a password. By leveraging its --custom-dir option to load a malicious custom fact, arbitrary commands were executed as root, resulting in full system compromise.

A great machine that highlights the impact of insecure parameter handling, cloud storage exposure, and the risks associated with misconfigured sudo privileges.

#HackTheBox #HTB #Facts #CyberSecurity #PenetrationTesting #EthicalHacking #RedTeam #PrivilegeEscalation #Linux #AWS #S3 #CamaleonCMS #CVE20252304 #JohnTheRipper #Ruby #Infosec #CTF #CyberSecurityLearning

Hack The Box:Interpreter Machine Walkthrough – Medium Difficulty

Completed Hack The Box machine “Interpreter” after exploiting CVE-2023-43208 in NextGen Healthcare Mirth Connect 4.4.0. Initial access involved API enumeration, unsafe Java deserialization exploitation, reverse shell execution, and database credential extraction from Mirth Connect configuration files. Cracking the recovered PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 hash provided SSH access as sedric and access to the user flag.

Privilege escalation involved enumerating a root-owned Flask notification service vulnerable to Server-Side Template Injection (SSTI). By forwarding the internal service over SSH and crafting a malicious XML payload, remote command execution as root was achieved, leading to retrieval of the root flag.

#HackTheBox #HTB #CyberSecurity #RedTeam #EthicalHacking #PenetrationTesting #OffensiveSecurity #WebSecurity #PrivilegeEscalation #SSTI #Deserialization #Linux #InfoSec #CVE202343208