This article is all about setting up a Private Cloud on your local machine on ubuntu, docker and VM. But before it is installed and configured, you should know what the cloud is and why it is a very important part of IT organizations.

Table of Content

• Cloud Computing
• Benefits of Cloud Computing
• Types of Cloud Computing
• Cloud Computing Deployment Models
• How cloud computing works
• Installation of Own cloud in Ubuntu
• Installation of OwnCloud using Docker
• Bitnami Owncloud Stack Virtual Machines

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of compute power, database, storage, applications, and other IT resources via the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Whether you are using it to run applications that share photos to millions of mobile users or to support business-critical operations, a cloud services platform provides rapid access to flexible and low-cost IT resources.

In other words, cloud computing means, storing and accessing information and programs over the internet instead of the hard drive of your computer. You can access as many resources as you need, almost instantly, and only pay for what you use.

References: https://aws.amazon.com/what-is-cloud-computing/

Benefits of Cloud Computing

• Cost Saving – Pay for what you use.
• Agile deployment – Easy and fast access a broad range technology (database, storage, compute etc.) on as per the requirement.
• Location Independent –Deploy your application in multiple physical locations around the world with just a click.
• Disaster Recovery – No environmental disruption, no natural calamity effect.
• Elasticity– Instantly scale up or down the amount of resources that actually need.

Types of Cloud Computing

There are three main types of models of cloud computing. Each type of cloud service and deployment method provides you with different levels of control, flexibility, and management.

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) -It is a cloud computing offering in which a vendor provides users access to computing resources such as servers, storage and networking. Organizations use their own platforms and applications within a service provider’s infrastructure.

Example: Linode, Rackspace, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cisco Metapod, Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine (GCE)

• Platform as a service (PaaS)– It is a cloud computing offering that provides users with a cloud environment in which they can develop manage and deliver applications. In addition to storage and other computing resources, users are able to use a suite of prebuilt tools to develop, customize and test their own application also can providers manage security, operating systems, server software and backups.

Example: AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Windows Azure, Force.com, Google App Engine, Apache Stratos.

• Software as a service (SaaS)-It is a cloud computing offering that provides users with access to a vendor’s cloud-based software. Users do not install applications on their local devices. Instead, the applications reside on a remote cloud network accessed through the web or an API. Through the application, users can store and analyse data and collaborate on projects.

Example: Google Apps, Dropbox, Salesforce, Cisco WebEx,

Cloud Computing Deployment Models

• Cloud (Public) – A cloud-based application is fully deployed in the cloud and all parts of the application run in the cloud. Applications in the cloud have either been created in the cloud or have been migrated from an existing infrastructure to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing.
• Hybrid- A hybrid deployment is a way to connect infrastructure and applications between cloud-based resources and existing resources that are not located in the cloud. The most common method of hybrid deployment is between the cloud and existing on-premises infrastructure to extend, and grow, an organization’s infrastructure into the cloud while connecting cloud resources to the internal system.
• On-premises (Private) – Private Cloud refers to the cloud solution dedicated for use by a single organization. The data centre resources may be located on-premise or operated by a third-party vendor off-site. The computing resources are isolated and delivered via a secure private network, and not shared with other customers.

How cloud computing works

Cloud computing gives you access to servers, storage, databases, and a broad set of application services over the Internet. A cloud services provider owns and maintains the network-connected hardware required for these application services, while you provision and use what you need via a web application.

Hope, now you have a basic understanding of cloud computing. Let’s start the installation of Owncloud in multiple ways.

Installation of Own cloud in Ubuntu

OwnCloud is the market-leading open-source software for cloud-based collaboration platforms. As an alternative to Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive, ownCloud offers real data security and privacy for you and your data. Store your files in one central location – protected from unauthorized access. Many features designed for absolute data security help you to work productively and securely.

Before starting the installation, I want to confirm that you should already have Ubuntu in PC or you can install ubuntu. As I already have Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Let’s start the journey together with below steps:

Install Apache2

OwnCloud requires a webserver to function. So, we install Apache2 on Ubuntu.

Install the MariaDB Server

After apache2 installation, run the commands to disable the directory listing and also to Restart the Apache2 services.

MariaDB is the database server. It is an enhanced, drop-in replacement for MySQL. MariaDB is used because it is fast, scalable and robust, with a rich ecosystem of storage engines, plugins and many other tools make it very versatile for a wide variety of use cases.

After installation of MariaDB , restart the service and enable MariaDB service to always start up when the server boots.

Install PHP and its modules

Run the commands to add a third-party repository and upgrade to PHP 7.1

Now,  update and upgrade

Next, we  install PHP7.1  and related modules

After installation of PHP 7.1, open FPM PHP default file.

Create OwnCloud  Database

After the installation of all the necessary LAMP packages, we will continue to configure the servers. First, we create the OwnCloud Database. Below are the steps:

1. Run the MySQL command to logon to the database server. In the next prompt, type the root password.
2. Create a database called Owncloud.
3. Create a  database user g nisha with the new password e.g 123(you Should put the strong password for security purpose).
4. Then, we grant the user full access to the database.
5. Finally, save your changes and exit.

Note: In the database, the command should be ended by a sign ; otherwise you will get an error.

Download Latest Owncloud Release

Visit  https://owncloud.com/download/ for download and extract OwnCloud Files into the /var/www/html directory.

Then set the correct permissions for OwnCloud to function, change the ownership and mod e.g as we grant (Read Write Execute i.e 777) permission.

Configure Apache2

Configure Apahce2 site configuration file for OwnCloud. This file will control how users access OwnCloud content. Create a new configuration file called owncloud.conf as shown.

Then copy and paste the content below into the file and save it. Replace the highlighted in yellow lines with your own domain name and directory root location and then save the file.

Enable the OwnCloud and Rewrite Module

After configuring the VirtualHost above, enable it by running the commands below and at last restart the Apache2 service.

Open the browser and put localhost(local IP ) e.g http://localhost/owncloud

You’ll be prompted to create an admin account and password. Connect to the database using the information you created and then click on finish setup.

            

Put the admin Credentials and continue.

Happy to see the final Picture of OwnCloud, now you can upload and store your data safely on Owncloud.

Installation of OwnCloud using Docker

Docker is a tool designed to make it easier to create, deploy, and run applications by using containers. Containers allow a developer to package up an application with all of the parts it needs, such as libraries and other dependencies, and ship it all out as one package.

Let’s start the installation with the below steps :

Install Docker

To install docker, simply open the terminal of Linux and type the following command:

Once the docker is up and running, you can run or pull any image in your docker. As per the requirement, we are going to search owncloud image. When you run the following command, it will first check your local repository; if the image is not available there then it will pull it from docker hub.

Once you find your image, you can pull it into your container and download the Owncloud image.

The docker attaches command permits you to attach to a running container using the container ID or name you can use one instance of shell only though attach command or you can directly run the container with container id. ownCloud is accessible via port 8080 on the host machine. But if you crave to open a new terminal with a new instance of container’s shell, we just need run docker exec.

To log in to the ownCloud UI, open http://localhost:8080 in your browser of choice, where you see the standard ownCloud login screen, as in the image below.

Finally welcome to your owncloud platform to perform your services (upload, safety storage of data etc.)

Bitnami Owncloud Stack Virtual Machines

Bitnami Virtual Machines contain a minimal Linux operating system with ownCloud installed and configured. Using the Bitnami Virtual Machine image requires hypervisor software such as VMware Player or VirtualBox. Both of these hypervisors are available free of charge.

You can download from here

Login with default credential

It very simple, only just navigate to the web browser and explore VM IP as shown below.

Author: Nisha Sharma is trained in Certified Ethical hacking and Bug Bounty Hunter. She is currently working at Ignite Technologies as a Security Analyst. Connect with her here

Docker services are extensively used in IT operations, so it is very important that you start learning from docker basics. In this article, we will cover the installation and setup of the docker, along with its specific uses.

Learn web application in

Table of Content

• Introduction to docker
• Docker and its terminology
• Advantages of docker
• Installation and usage

Introduction to Docker

Docker is a third-party tool developed to create an isolated environment to execute any application. These applications are run using containers. These containers are unique because they bring together all the dependencies of an application into a single package and deploy it. 

Now, to work with docker you will need to install docker-engine in your host. It is a foundation to the docker system, which basically runs as a client-server application. Its daemon process is referred to as server and the command-line interface is referred to as a client and REST API is used to create a communication link between client and server.

In Linux, docker client interacts with docker server through the CLI. Here, the terminal is docker client and docker host will run the docker daemon.

Whereas in windows, to work with docker, we need to install docker toolbox component in docker host in order to set up an environment on your Windows or iOS.

Docker and its terminology

When working with docker, one should be familiar with the following terms :

• Docker Hub: It is a repository which available to all who uses docker through cloud. Through docker hub, one can create, store, test, pull and share container images.
• Docker Images : Docker image acts as a template in order to create container. Build command is used to create docker images. Docker images makes it easy.
• Docker containers : Containers are said to be isolated environment provided to the docker image and its dependencies so that it can run independently. The focus of deploying a container is to update or repair an application or just simply modify it and share it. When working on an image, container lets you create a layer of a single command used which make it easy to modify it, or upgrade or degrade is version.
• Docker Registry : All the docker images are stored in docker registry. User can either can have local registry on their system or they can have a public one like docker hub.

Advantages of docker

• Easy to use
• Faster scaling systems
• Better software delivery
• Flexibility
• Provides isolated environment
• Supports software-defined networking
• Rapid deployment
• Security

Installation and usage

To install docker, simply open the terminal of Linux and type the following command :

To check the version one can use the following command :

Further, you can run help command in docker, which is as follows, to know all the options that docker provides at your service.

Once the docker is up and running, you can run or pull any image in your docker container. For instance, here we have run hello-world. When you run the following command, it will first check your local repository; if the image is not available there then it will pull it from docker hub.

As we have explained before, CLI works as a client, so directly from the terminal, you can search for any image you like. Like, here we have searched for ubuntu. One thing to remember here is that image with more stars will be the most authentic one.

Once you find your image, you can pull it into your container with the following command :

Now to check how many images you have in your docker, simply type the following command :

To remove any image, use the following command :

Here, rmi refers to remove image.

Now, in the details given by ps command, you can see that the name of our ubuntu image is adoring curie, which is a random name generated by docker for every image. To, rename this name we can use the following command :

And you can confirm with the ps command again that the name has been changed as shown in the image below :

The docker attaches command permits you to attach to a running container using the container ID or name, you can use one instance of shell only though attach command. But if you crave to open new terminal with new instance of container’s shell, we just need run docker exec.

Using the ps command we can see all the processes that are running in docker. There, for this, type :

To stop the running container, you can use stop command as shown in the below image, we have stopped the container and its process which can be confirm with the help of process command. As result there should be no running process for ignite.

If you can export the docker filesystem as a archive, use export command to compress the filesystem of a docker container into tar. The export commands fetch the whole container like a snapshot of a regular VM.

It will give you a flat .tar archive containing the filesystem of your container.

When you will export container as tar file, the file has hash value which can read as:

In order to save the image of container which you can upload on other docker use save command.  You can subsequently load this “saved” images into a new docker instance and create containers from these images.

In order to clear all image and or stop all process of the container. It will pack the layers and metadata of all the chain required to build the image.

To learn how to set up vulnerable web application setup using docker from here.

Author: Yashika Dhir is a passionate Researcher and Technical Writer at Hacking Articles. She is a hacking enthusiast. contact here

In this article, we will learn the process of installing an Apache Tomcat on any Linux Machine. We will also learn how to gain control over our victim’s PC through exploiting Apache Tomcat.

Requirements:

Server/Victim Machine: Ubuntu 18.04

Pentesting Machine: Kali Linux

Table of Content

Introduction of Apache Tomcat

Installation of Apache Tomcat

• Install Apache
• Install Java JDK
• Download tomcat manager
• Tomcat manager configuration
• Create a tomcat user and group
• Assign permission
• Create a systemd Service File
• Update firewall to allow tomcat
• Configure Tomcat Web Management Interface
• Access the Web Interface

Exploiting Apache Tomcat

Introduction of Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat which is also known as Tomcat Server is a Java-Based HTTP Web Server. It implements Java EE Specifications like Java Servlet, JavaServer Pages (JSP), Java EL, and WebSocket. It is an open-source software made by developers at Apache Software Foundation. Apache has been released as early as 1999. That makes Apache Tomcat 20 years old at the time of publication of this article.

Apache Tomcat in its simplest configuration runs in a single operating system process. This process is commonly known as the Java virtual machine (JVM). This allows Apache Tomcat platform-independent as well as secure as compared to others.

Installation of Apache Tomcat

Let’s start with apache tomcat installation but before that, you should go with below command.

Now, Apache Tomcat needs Java to be installed so that the Java Application code can be executed on the server. To make this possible, installed the Java Development Kit.

Create User and Group

To run the tomcat as an unprivileged user, create a group and a new user named as tomcat. We have created the user in /opt because we are going to install tomcat in that directory. We don’t need the tomcat user to use the shell so we will be using the -s parameter to set /bin/false shell. By doing this authentication will get disabled for the tomcat user.

Download Tomcat Manager

Now, we are going to download the apache tomcat Package from here.  After downloading it’s time to extract the package it inside /opt directory and move forward.

Assign Permissions

Now we are going to use the chgrp command to give the ownership of the tomcat directory to the tomcat group.

To allow the tomcat group user to perform the read and execute operation change permission for /conf file as given below.

Also give ownership to the tomcat group user for directories like webapp/, work/, temp/ and logs/.

We want Apache Tomcat to be run as a service and for that, we will have to set up a system service. To do this, we are going to require the location of the Java Installation. For this, we will be running the command given below.

Create an SYSTEMD Service File

To create a system service file, open the tomcat. service file in the /etc/systemd/system directory using nano editor.

Now append the following content and modify the JAVA_HOME as shown below 

Now Save this file. This will make tomcat a service.

Reload the systemd daemon to register our newly created tomcat service. If everything is done correctly, we will able to run, stop and see the status of the Apache Tomcat as a service.

Update Firewall to Allow Tomcat

It’s time to allow the tomcat via our firewall Since Ubuntu has the ufw installed and set up by default. Apache Tomcat generally uses the post 8080 to receive requests from users.

Execute below command to start tomcat starts automatically whenever the machine boots up.

Configure Tomcat Web Management Interface

At this stage, if you will browse the Server IP with the port 8080, you will be greeted with an Apache Tomcat Page. But if you will click on the links to the Manager App, you will get Access Denied. This means that you haven’t yet set up the Tomcat Web Manager Interface. So, let’s do that and complete the Apache Tomcat Setup.

Open the file using the nano editor and make the following changes as shown in the image given below.

You can change the username and password as per your choice. We will save and close the editor after making appropriate changes.

By default, Apache Tomcat restricts access to the Manager and Host Manager apps to connections coming from the server. As we are installing Tomcat for a remote machine, we will probably want to alter this restriction. To change the restrictions on these, we will be editing these context.xml files.

Inside, comment out the IP address restriction to allow connections from anywhere. Alternatively, if you would like to allow access only to connections coming from your own IP address.

We do the same thing with the host-manager file. To allow access to Host Manager too.

saved the changes restart the tomcat service.

Access the Web Interface

We got to the interface by entering your server’s domain name or IP address followed on port 8080 in our browser. Now we will try to see if the Manager and Host Manager interfaces are working. Click the Buttons highlighted in the image.

The Login authentication page will pop-up as expected, we enter the credentials that we created earlier.

Upon verification of the credentials, Apache Tomcat lands us to this Tomcat Virtual Host Manager Interface. From this page, you can add virtual hosts to serve your applications. This concludes our Apache Tomcat Setup.

Exploiting Apache Tomcat

Now that we have successfully installed the Apache Tomcat Framework, Let’s do its Penetration Testing. We are going to use Metasploit for exploiting the Apache Tomcat.

This module can be used to execute a payload on Apache Tomcat servers that have an exposed “manager” application. The payload is uploaded as a WAR archive containing a JSP application using a POST request against the /manager/html/upload component. NOTE: The compatible payload sets vary based on the selected target. For example, you must select the Windows target to use native Windows payloads.

As a result, you can observe that we have the meterpreter session of the target machine.

Learn multiple ways to exploit tomcat manager from here.

Author: Ahmad is a Technical Writer, Researcher and Penetration Tester. Contact here

This post is related to WordPress security testing to identify what will be possible procedure to exploit WordPress by compromising admin console. We have already setup WordPress in our local machine but if you want to learn WordPress installation and configuration then visit the link given below.

https://www.hackingarticles.in/wordpress-penetration-testing-lab-setup-in-ubuntu/

As we all know wpscan is a standalone tool for identifying vulnerable plugins and themes of WordPress, but in this post, we are not talking wpscan tutorial.

Table of Content

• Metasploit Framework
• Injecting Malicious code in WP_Theme
• Upload Vulnerable WP_Pulgin
• Inject Malicious Plugin

Requirement:

Host machine: WordPress

Attacker machine: Kali Linux

WordPress Credential: admin: admin (in our case)

Let’s begin!!

As you can observe that I have access of WordPress admin console over the web browser, for obtaining web shell we need to exploit this CMS. There are multiple methods to exploit WordPress, let’s go for some operations.

Metasploit Framework

The very first method that we have is Metasploit framework, this module takes an administrator username and password, logs into the admin panel, and uploads a payload packaged as a WordPress plugin. Because this is authenticated code execution by design, it should work on all versions of WordPress and as a result, it will give meterpreter session of the webserver.

Great!! It works wonderfully and you can see that we have owned the reverse connection of the web server via meterpreter session.

Injecting Malicious code in WP_Theme

There’s also a second technique that lets you spawn web server shells. If you have a username and password for the administrator, log in to the admin panel and inject malicious PHP code as a wordpress theme.

Login into WP_dashboard and explore the appearance tab.

Now go for theme twenty fifteen chose the templet into 404.php

You see a text area for editing templet, inject your malicious php code here to obtain reverse connection of the webserver.

Now, to proceed further, we used the reverse shell of PHP (By Penetstmonkey). And then we copied the above php-reverse-shell and paste it into the 404.php wordpress template as shown in the picture below. We have altered the IP address to our present IP address and entered any port you want and started the netcat listener to get the reverse connection.

 

Update the file and browse the following URL to run the injected php code.

you will have your session upon execution of 404.php file. Access netcat using the following command:

Upload Vulnerable WP_Plugin

Some time logon users do not own writable authorization to make modifications to the WordPress theme, so we choose “Inject WP pulgin malicious” as an alternative strategy to acquiring a web shell.

So, once you have access to a WordPress dashboard, you can attempt installing a malicious plugin. Here I’ve already downloaded the vulnerable plugin from exploit db.

Click here to download the plugin for practice.

Since we have zip file for plugin and now it’s time to upload the plugin.

Dashboard > plugins > upload plugin

Browse the downloaded zip file as shown.

Once the package gets installed successfully, we need to activate the plugin.

When everything is well setup then go for exploiting. Since we have installed vulnerable plugin named “reflex-gallery” and it is easily exploitable.

You will get exploit for this vulnerability inside Metasploit framework and thus load the below module and execute the following command:

As the above commands are executed, you will have your meterpreter session. Just as portrayed in this article, there are multiple methods to exploit a WordPress platformed website.

Inject Malicious Plugin

As you have seen above that we have uploaded the vulnerable plugin whose exploit is available. But this time we are going to inject our generated malicious plugin for obtain reverse shell.

This is quite simple as we have saved malicious code for reverse shell inside a php file named “revshell.php” and compressed the file in zip format.

Again, repeat the same step as done above for uploading plugin “revshell.zip” file and start netcat listener to obtain the reverse connection of the target machine.

Once the package gets installed successfully, we need to activate the plugin.

As soon as you will activate the plugin it will through the reverse connection as netcat session.

Author: Komal Singh is a Cyber Security Researcher and Technical Content Writer, she is completely enthusiastic pentester and Security Analyst at Ignite Technologies. Contact Here