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Hack the Seattle VM (CTF Challenge)

This is another article for Boot2Root series in CTF challenges. This lab is prepared by HollyGracefull. This is just a preview of the original lab which stimulates the E-commerce web application which contains common security errors. Current vulnerabilities are listed below :

  • SQL Injection (Error-based)
  • SQL Injection (Blind)
  • Reflected Cross-Site Scripting
  • Stored Cross-Site Scripting
  • Insecure Direct-Object Reference
  • Username Enumeration
  • Path Traversal
  • Exposed phpinfo()
  • Exposed Administrative Interface
  • Weak Admin Credentials

WalkThrough

Firstly, let’s locate our target.

netdiscover 

Our target is 192.168.1.8. Let’s scan it with nmap.

nmap –p- -A 192.168.1.8

The only port we found open was 80. Next, we fire up the Nikto.

nikto –h 192.168.1.8

Through nikto we discovered two directories : /admin/ and /images/. OK! Let’s make its mental note and decided to move forward with opening our target in the browser.

Opening it on the browser we found that it was an e-commerce site as hinted by the author. We checked every tab but found nothing except in the blog tab. 

In the blog tab, when you will hover your mouse arrow over the admin in the phrase ‘Hey Admin!’. It will change from arrow to a hand that indicates that means it will open as it a click on.

When you click on it, it will show a username of admin. Ok! I made a note of it. Let’s now check the clothing tab.

There is nothing useful in this tab. As the author hinted that the website is vulnerable towards SQL attacks so let’s try one. This time let’s try a different SQL attack using BurpSuite. Capture the cookies of the webpage through BurpSuite.

Copy the cooky string and paste it in a simple text file.

Then start the SQL attack by typing the following command in the terminal of Kali.

sqlmap –r /root/Desktop/sea.txt –dbs

Here,

/root/Desktop/sea.txt is the path of the text file in which we had saved the cookies.

This command will give us the name of the following database.

Out of these databases, we will dump the tables of seattle with the following command :

sqlmap –r /root/Desktop/sea.txt –D seattle –tables

And with that, we will have all the name of the tables as you can see in the following image.

Next, we will dump the columns of the tables with the following command :

sqlmap –r /root/Desktop/sea.txt –D seattle –T tblMembers –columns

The execution of the above command will show the table names as follows:

Now in the table names, there is a table password. Now we already have the username of the admin and we just want the password. So now we will dump the contents of the password table.

sqlmap –r /root/Desktop/sea.txt –D seattle –T tblmembers –C password –dump

And voila! We have the password i.e. Assasin1

Now in the browser, go to my account tab and there you will find a login portal. Give the username and password of the admin and click on Login.

And you will be logged in as the admin.

This CTF does contain any flag. All that required was to have admin access and yooohoooo!! We have that.

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