Forest - Hackthebox Walkthrough
No SMB anonymous login. No null session on LDAP… yet. But Kerberos is a talkative protocol. You note the hostname: FOREST.htb.local . You add the domain to your /etc/hosts :
$krb5asrep$svc-alfresco@htb.local:... Bingo. No pre-auth required. You copy the hash to a file and feed it to john :
You have valid credentials: svc-alfresco:s3rvice . Now you’re in the forest, but not yet to the throne. You try evil-winrm : forest hackthebox walkthrough
The forest is dark, but the path is always there. You just have to know which trees to knock on.
ldapsearch -H ldap://10.10.10.161 -x -b "DC=htb,DC=local" The output is a firehose of objects—users, groups, computers. You grep for cn=users and find something delicious: . You filter for userAccountControl values that don’t require Kerberos pre-authentication. No SMB anonymous login
net user hacker Hacker123! /add /domain net group "Domain Admins" hacker /add /domain Then you use evil-winrm again with the new user:
evil-winrm -i 10.10.10.161 -u hacker -p 'Hacker123!' And you’re at C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\root.txt . The final flag. You log out, clear your hashes, and take a breath. The Forest machine wasn't about kernel exploits or buffer overflows. It was about patience—listening to LDAP, cracking a service account, climbing the group hierarchy, and resetting a single password to reach the crown. You note the hostname: FOREST
After a few blind attempts, you remember a trick. Sometimes, you can bind anonymously to LDAP without credentials. You craft:
ldapsearch -H ldap://10.10.10.161 -x -s base namingcontexts It works. The server hands you the root DSE: DC=htb,DC=local . Now you dig.
Account Operators can create and modify non-admin users and groups. You create a new user and add them to Domain Admins :
No SMB anonymous login. No null session on LDAP… yet. But Kerberos is a talkative protocol. You note the hostname: FOREST.htb.local . You add the domain to your /etc/hosts :
$krb5asrep$svc-alfresco@htb.local:... Bingo. No pre-auth required. You copy the hash to a file and feed it to john :
You have valid credentials: svc-alfresco:s3rvice . Now you’re in the forest, but not yet to the throne. You try evil-winrm :
The forest is dark, but the path is always there. You just have to know which trees to knock on.
ldapsearch -H ldap://10.10.10.161 -x -b "DC=htb,DC=local" The output is a firehose of objects—users, groups, computers. You grep for cn=users and find something delicious: . You filter for userAccountControl values that don’t require Kerberos pre-authentication.
net user hacker Hacker123! /add /domain net group "Domain Admins" hacker /add /domain Then you use evil-winrm again with the new user:
evil-winrm -i 10.10.10.161 -u hacker -p 'Hacker123!' And you’re at C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\root.txt . The final flag. You log out, clear your hashes, and take a breath. The Forest machine wasn't about kernel exploits or buffer overflows. It was about patience—listening to LDAP, cracking a service account, climbing the group hierarchy, and resetting a single password to reach the crown.
After a few blind attempts, you remember a trick. Sometimes, you can bind anonymously to LDAP without credentials. You craft:
ldapsearch -H ldap://10.10.10.161 -x -s base namingcontexts It works. The server hands you the root DSE: DC=htb,DC=local . Now you dig.
Account Operators can create and modify non-admin users and groups. You create a new user and add them to Domain Admins :
