Revising the approach
Let us summarize the entire penetration test step by step:
- In the very first step, we did an NMAP scan over the target.
- We found that VSFTPD 2.3.4 is running on port
21
and is vulnerable to attack. - We exploited VSFTPD 2.3.5 running on port
21
. - We got the shell access to the target running at
192.168.10.112
. - We created a Linux meterpreter shell and copied it to the
/var/www
directory of Apache. Next, we ran thewget
command from the shell and downloaded our newly created meterpreter shell onto the target. - We assigned full privileges to the shell backdoor file via
chmod 777 backdoor.elf
. - Setting up an exploit handler in a separate window, which is listening on port
4444
, we ran thebackdoor.elf
file on the target. - We got the Linux meterpreter access on the target system, which is
192.168.10.112
. - Running the
arp
command on the compromised system, we found that it was internally connected to a separate network and is connected to another system running on an internal IP address,192.168.20.4
. - We quickly set up an autoroute to the
192.168.20.0/24
network via our meterpreter shell on192.168.10.112
. - Pivoting all the traffic through our meterpreter, we performed a TCP port scan on the target and service identification modules.
- We found that target was running vulnerable version of PHP on port
80
. - We exploited the system with PHP CGI Argument Injection Vulnerability.
- We gained PHP meterpreter access to the internal system of the network running at
192.168.20.4
. - We performed similar steps as done previously on the first system, by uploading and executing the
backdoor.elf
file. - We got Linux meterpreter access to the target.
- We ran the
arp
command to find if there were any other hosts present on the network. - We figured out that there was one more system running on IP address
192.168.20.6
and we performed a TCP port scan. - Scanning all the ports, we figured out that HFS 2.3 was running on port
8080
and was vulnerable to the Remote Command Execution vulnerability. - We exploited the system with the HFS exploit module with Metasploit.
- We got the Windows meterpreter access to the target.
- We ran a persistence module to maintain access to the target.
- The persistence module will try to establish a connection to our system after every few seconds and will open meterpreter access as soon as a handler is up.
- We cleared the logs via the
event_manager
module from meterpreter.