boot2root, hacking, web application security

@TryHackMe – Pickle Rick CTF

Another day, another challenge.

Today’s blog post I will be solving the Pickle Rick CTF on TryHackMe.com. Click HERE to be redirected to the challenge.

After hitting the deploy button we now have our IP address.

pickle_ip_address

We see that this challenge is focused on finding vulnerabilities in a web server.

Let’s run nmap, nikto, and dirbuster to see what we find…

pickle_nmap

Executing nmap, we see that there are two port open – 22 (ssh), and 80 (http).

Moving on to nikto…

pickle_nikto

Running nikto we see that there is an login php file which is interested.

Finally, let’s look at dirbuster.

pickle_dirb

With dirbuster we have an access directory, as well as an index.html, and robots.txt file (both returning a 200 which is good). We also have a server-status which is returning a forbidden http code of 403.

We’ve done basic enumeration let’s move to the web app and see if we can find more clues.

Let’s answer the first question.

pickle_first_ingredient_question

Navigating to the IP address in a browser we see the following.pickle_landing_page

Nothing really stands out, except for the burping :-). Let’s view the source code and see what we find.pickle_source_code

Viewing the source code (Right click on page, select view source code) we see at the bottom there’s a username. Let’s see if we can find a password. Maybe our dirbuster results will come in handy…pickle_robots

Going back to our results in dirb we notice there’s a robots.txt file. Going to this file, we see the above. Hmm, this is a strange robots.txt file. Maybe this could be the password, let’s see if it works.pickle_login

In our nikto results, we had a login page. Navigating to that page and entering our username from the index.html page, and a password from the robots.txt page we get the following.pickle_portal

Success! We’re in the application.

Let’s run the ls (listing) command with the options of all and long listing and see what we have.

pickle_listing

pickle_listing_directory

Opening the Sup3rS3cretPickl3Ingred.txt file we have the first ingredient below.pickle_first_ingredient

Also notice that the directory shows the asset directory that we found in dirbuster. Navigating to that webpage we see the following

pickle_assets_directory

The directory have gifs and jpgs, nothing of importance to solve the challenge.

Let’s move on to question 2.pickle_second_ingredient_question

We know this application is vulnerable to command injection, let’s see if we can perform a directory traversal to view other parts of the application. Going back to the directory  listing we notice there’s a clue.txt file. Opening the file we see the following

pickle_clue_txt

Our hunch was correct, we need to look around the file system to find the next ingredient. pickle_directory_traversal

In the above command we’re doing a directory traversal to move up to the root directory, list all of the files in long form (ls -al), and print the working directory to make sure we’re in the correct folder (pwd). Doing this we get the below screenshot.

pickle_root_directory

We’re viewing the root level directory, so our command(s) were a success! We notice a lot of folders, but at this time two are useful for us. The first is home, which in every  Linux system ever user has a home directory. The second is root (admin/super user) which can only be accessed through the admin. We’ll come back to root later. Let’s see if we can navigate to the home directory.

pickle_change_home_directory

pickle_listing_home_directory

Executing the command above, we’re now in the /home directory! We notice there are two folders, rick and Ubuntu. The Ubuntu folder is from the operating system. Let’s explore the rick folder and see what we can find.

pickle_change_rick_directory

Changing to the rick directory we see the second ingredient!

pickle_list_second_ingredient_rick_directory

pickle_less_second_ingredient

Using the less command we open the second ingredient. Note: The filename is in quotations due to spacing. Without the quotations Linux would interpret the second in second ingredients.

pickle_second_ingredient_answer

We now have our second ingredient, let’s answer the final question.

pickle_third_ingredient_question

Remember in the beginning of this walkthrough, I mentioned that another folder – root is of particular interest to us and only the admin or superuser is the only user to access this folder. Let’s see if we can elevate our privileges to the admin and view this folder.

pickle_sudo_listing

Before we can access this folder, let’s run the sudo -l command to see what privileges we have on this box.

Executing this command we see that we can execute ANY command on this box WITHOUT a password (ALL NOPASSWD: ALL). This surely is NOT good security! Let’s use the sudo command with the listing (ls) with the root folder and see what we can find.

pickle_sudo_listing_as_root

Executing the command, we see that there are two files in the /root folder. One of them is named 3rd.txt. Could this be our third ingredient? Let’s see.

pickle_access_root_listing

Executing the sudo command in conjunction with the less command on the 3rd.txt file, we see that we do indeed have the third and final ingredient.

pickle_less_root_third_ingredient

pickle_third_ingredient

Challenge solved!

boot2root, hacking, OSCP, web application security

OSCP Series: Kioptrix Level 3

Another day, another challenge.

In today’s blog post we’re going to solve level 3 of the Kioptrix series.

For the level 2 walk through, click HERE.

Let’s begin.

Starting the VM, we’re presented with the following login screen.

Kioptrix_Level3_Login

Going back to the login screen the disclaimer states that we need to modify the /etc/hosts to include our IP address that our kioptrix3 vm is running.

Kioptrix_Level3_cat_etc_hosts

Let’s see which services are running on the virtual machineKioptrix_Level3_nmap

Hmm… we have two services open – ssh and http. Let’s go to the web application and do a manual crawl of the site.

Navigating to kioptrix3.com we see the following:

Kioptrix_Level3_webpage1

Clicking the Login button we’re presented with a login screen. At the bottom we notice the page is using LotusCMS. Let’s keep this in mind, just in case we it to exploit the application.Kioptrix_Level3_webpage2_login

Let’s run nikto to see if we can find more vulnerabilities in the web application.

Kioptrix_Level3_nikto

Kioptrix_Level3_nikto2

We see that the application found a phpmyadmin folder. Let’s go to the folder and see what we can find.

Kioptrix_Level3_webpage2_phpMyAdmin

Going to the php page, we realize we don’t have login credentials, so at this point we can’t log into the phpmyadmin page. We know the application is using LotusCMS let’s see if there’s a LotusCMS module that we can use in Metasploit.

Kioptrix_Level3_msfconsole

Kioptrix_Level3_msfconsole2

After opening and searching Metasploit for LotusCMS we see there’s a perfect remote code execution we can use.

Kioptrix_Level3_msfconsole_lotus_exploit

After selecting the exploit let’s review the options to see what we need to add to the module to make the exploit work. We need a remote host (RHOST), remote port (RPORT) and the URI. Let’s add the information below.

Kioptrix_Level3_msfconsole_lotus_meterpreter

After entering the information, and typing run, we notice that we’re presented with a meterpreter shell! Let’s go to the home directory and see how many users are on the box.

Kioptrix_Level3_msfconsole_lotus_meterpreter_2

We have three users, dreg, loneferret, and www (web).  Let’s see what’s in the dreg folder.

Kioptrix_Level3_msfconsole_lotus_meterpreter_dreg

Searching the dreg folder we don’t see much. We see a bash_logout, bashrc, and profile scripts. Let’s move on to loneferret.

Kioptrix_Level3_msfconsole_lotus_meterpreter_loneferret

Hmm… Loneferret has a lot of information. We see there’s a file titled, “.sudo_as_admin_successful”, a company police readme, and a checksec script. Let’s review the company policy readme.

Kioptrix_Level3_msfconsole_lotus_meterpreter_loneferret_company_readme

Well… it seem if we want to edit, create, or view files we need to use the command sudo ht. Let’s keep this in our toolbox because I am sure we will use it later. Remember we found a phpmyadmin page, let’s see if we can find a config file with login credentials.

kioptrix_config_file

Doing a search on the kioptrix3 folder, we see there are three config files. Let’s review the last file, gconfig.php.

Kioptrix_Level3_msfconsole_lotus_meterpreter_loneferret_gconfig

Opening the gconfig.php file we notice there are login credentials for the phpmyadmin page! Let’s keep this in our toolbox because we might have to use it later.

At this point, we have php login credentials, but that’s not enough to gain root privileges. Let’s see if we can review the web application again for more clues.

We notice there’s a gallery section of the application. Maybe we can be lucky and the application is susceptible to sql injection.

Kioptrix_Level3_gallery

Adding an apostrophe to the end of the number there’s no change in the application. We notice at the bottom of the page  there’s a sorting option. Let’s see if changing the sorting option will invoke a SQL injection.Kioptrix_Level3_gallery_photo_id_before_sql_injection_2

Changing the sorting option to Photo Id, and adding the apostrophe to the end of the number, we get the following…Kioptrix_Level3_gallery_photo_id_sql_injection_2

Success! The application is susceptible to SQL injection. Let’s fire up sqlmap and see what goodies we can find.

Kioptrix_Level3_sqlmap

Kioptrix_Level3_sqlmap2

Executing a preliminary SQLMap run we see that SQLMap verified our manual testing results that the application is susceptible to SQL injection. SQLMap also found the technologies the application is using. Let’s do a more extensive probe. Firing SQLMap again we use the dump all to see what data we can find.

Kioptrix_Level3_sqlmap3

Kioptrix_Level3_sqlmap4

We found the dev accounts database, and notice that we have two users dreg, and loneferret, along with their passwords. Remember these are the same users we found when we used Metasploit with the LotusCMS remote code execution.

Now that we have login credentials, and we know that loneferret has more promising information than dreg, let’s connect to loneferret’s account through ssh.

Kioptrix_Level3_ssh

Connecting to loneferret’s account, we try to access the root folder, but receive a permission denied (we’re not root… yet). We also try to execute the sudo ht command that was listed in the company readme file, and we get the error, “error opening terminal: xterm-256color”.

Kioptrix_Level3_cat_etc_hosts_xterm

Doing a quick google search we find that we need to use the following command “export TERM=xterm”. Doing this and running the sudo ht command again we’re presented with the following screenshot. Let’s see if we can view and modify the /etc/sudoers file and see if we can escalate our privileges from loneferret to root.

Kioptrix_Level3_ht1

Kioptrix_Level3_ht_adding_sh

Opening the /etc/sudoers file we notice that the loneferret has a user privilege escalation where a password is not required. Right now it’s for the commands: su, and sh. Let’s add our ht command to the list. After adding the command, saving, and exiting we’re presented back to the command prompt.

Kioptrix_Level3_root

Executing the command sudo /bin/sh, and running a whoami we see that we’ve been escalated to root! Running the ls command we see that we’re presented with the same information we had in our meterpreter shell. Changing our directory to /root we notice there’s a Congrats.txt file.Kioptrix_Level3_root2Kioptrix_Level3_root3

Opening the Congrats.txt file we have found the flag and completed the challenge!