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This was an easy Windows box that involved exploiting a remote buffer overflow vulnerability in the Chatterbox application to gain initial access and using cached autologon credentials to execute a reverse shell as the Administrator user and escalate privileges.
Read moreThis was an easy Windows machine that involved uploading a web.config file onto a Windows ASP web server to gain remote code execution and exploiting token impersonation to escalate privileges to system.
Read moreWindows allows users to set specific programs to automatically start whenever the system boots, the list of programs that have this functionality enabled is stored in the Windows Registry. Although this feature can be very handy if startup programs are setup with improper permissions it may allow attackers to escalate privileges, as these programs are executed in the context of the user who is logging in at that point in time.
Read moreCompTIA Security+ should be the first security certification a cyber security student should earn, as it establishes the core knowledge required of most cybersecurity roles and provides a springboard to intermediate-level cybersecurity jobs.
It is ideal for candidates who are looking to become cyber security analysts, vulnerability assessor or even penetration testers. Security+ is compliant with ISO 17024 standards and overall has really good reputation in the industry, which is one of the reasons I decided to go for this certification, back in early 2019.
Read moreSudo is a program for Unix-like operating systems that allows users to run programs with the security privileges of another user, by default the superuser. It originally stood for “superuser do” as the older versions of Sudo were designed to run commands only as the superuser. It is commonly used in scenarios where normal users need to be able to perform actions as root.
Over the years, certain versions of Sudo were found to be affected by vulnerabilities that allowed attackers to escalate privileges to root, this guide will demonstrate how to identify a vulnerable Sudo version and how to exploit it in order to perform privilege escalation.
Read moreThis was an easy Linux machine that involved exploiting a WordPress plugin to gain access to the wp-config.php file which contained database credentials and uploading a malicious plugin into WordPress to gain remote access. Privilege escalation was then possible by exploiting a clear-text password left in the BASH history or an insecure cron job.
Read moreThis was an intermediate Linux box that involved exploiting an insecure AWS S3 bucket to upload a PHP reverse shell to gain remote access, using credentials found in an unprotected DynamoDB database to gain a user shell and exploiting a vulnerable PHP script to extract the root user’s private SSH keys and escalate privileges to root through the DynamoDB database.
Read moreThis was an easy Linux box that involved accessing an open SMB share containing a list of credentials that could be used to bruteforce a SquirrelMail web application, finding SMB credentials on the application to access a new share which revealed a second web application, and exploiting a remote file inclusion vulnerability in Cuppa CMS to gain remote access. Privilege escalation was possible due to a misconfigured cron job running as root and using a wildcard with the tar command.
Read moreThis was an easy Linux box that involved exploiting a directory traversal vulnerability in the pChart web application in order to access the rules in the Apache configuration file, which revealed a user agent change was necessary to be able to navigate to the PHPTax web application hosted on port 8080, which was affected by a remote code execution vulnerability that could be used to gain remote access to the machine. A simple kernel exploit can then be used to escalate privileges to root.
Read moreThe kernel is a component of the operating system that sits at the core of it, it has complete control over everything that occurs in the system. Because of this, exploiting vulnerabilities in the kernel will pretty much always result in a full system compromise.
Kernel exploits affect a certain version of a kernel or operating system and they are generally executed locally on the target machine in order to escalate privileges to system.
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