Hack The Box - Tactics

Hi everyone, welcome to my "Tactics" walkthrough.

Before moving on, I strongly encourage you to try to solve the challenges yourself at HackTheBox before looking at any of the answers.

TASK 1

Which Nmap switch can we use to enumerate machines when our packets are otherwise blocked by the Windows firewall?

A simple google search helped me find out about the -Pn flag.

Answer: -Pn

TASK 2

What does the 3-letter acronym SMB stand for?

Answer: Server Message Block

TASK 3

What port does SMB use to operate at?

Again, by using google, we learn that SMB uses two different ports, but on modern servers, it will probably be 445

Answer: 445

TASK 4

What command line argument do you give to `smbclient` to list available shares?

By using the command "smbclient -h" I can see that the flag to list available shares is "-L"

TASK 5

What character at the end of a share name indicates it's an administrative share?

After we list the directories, we can see that the answer is "$."

Answer: $

TASK 6

Which Administrative share is accessible on the box that allows users to view the whole file system?

The answer is the previous screenshot's second directory.

Answer: C$

TASK 7

What command can we use to download the files we find on the SMB Share?

Answer: get

TASK 8

Which tool that is part of the Impacket collection can be used to get an interactive shell on the system?

Again, by using google, I found this tool.

Answer: psexec.py

SUBMIT FLAG

I started by running this command.

"smbclient \\\\IPADDRESS\\C$ -U Administrator"

to get inside the "C" directory as it was not password protected,

then I navigated to Users > Administrator > Desktop.

And there was the flag!

Answer: f751c19eda8f61ce81827e6930a1f40c

Conclusion

This wasn't the most challenging room on HTB, but it is a good practice for beginners in dealing with SMB shares, so overall, it's not too bad.

I hope you all enjoyed this CTF, and feel free to share or maybe even get me a cup of coffee.