Starting with Python for Hacking

One of the most important things one can learn for hacking is getting comfy with programming. Python is a good language to start. Another very important aspect of hacking is – SEARCH ENGINES. It stands to reason to combine searching and programming. First, install the necessary library: This is how a request to google looks

Alternate Logins

When we browse a web site, the first thing we often notice is its login pages. The more amateur hacker may try to brute-force it right away. However, the more experienced tester will think: are there any other authentication points to the same resource? The answer is often resoundingly YES! Modern applications often create alternative

What are Serialization / Deserialization attacks about?

So what is de-serialization? What are serialization attacks? What is serialization? What is serial? Ok ok, hold your horses, kemosabe…will start from the beginning, this is serial: Now that the hard part is out of our way, lets start dissecting the rest. Common explanation: Serialization is merely representing object as a stream of bits and

Problems Uploading Web-Shells

Lets say you found a security issue that allowed you to upload a PHP web shell into the application. We all have been through those simple php web shells: Classic! Or it can be hundreds of lines of more complex code. You then happily gallop to your shell to execute commands: http://your_url.com/?shell.php?cmd=dir And then something

Port Scanning Tips…nmap

Often penetration testing engagements start with good old –*port scanning*–. Nmap is often the tool to use for it: nmap -p- [ip-address-here] –open -T3 -T argument is a parameter of time, and it is an important one. Here is the table illustrating different timing modes: Two important details from the table above: When this can

What is .git and how you eat it?

Git is an open-source distributed version control system that is available to all kinds of users for free. Git tools work in conjugation with Git repositories. OK, now in human language…when you see a .git directory in a web app – it is good. It means the web app developer by mistake (or not?) deployed

HTB Traverxec walkthrough

Hi everyone! Here is my second walkthrough. Let’s start with nmap: nmap -A 10.10.10.165 (We use -A flag for OS detection, version detection, script scanning and traceroute) As we can see, two ports are open: 22 – SSH, and 80 – HTTP. And we can notice the interesting web server nostromo 1.9.6. I suggest first

HTB Knife walkthrough

It’s one of the easiest machines on Hack The Box which is good for beginners. Therefore I will try to explain my every step thoroughly. We will start from port scanning with nmap: nmap -A 10.10.10.242 -Pn (We use -A flag for OS detection, version detection, script scanning, traceroute and -Pn for not pinging the

SQL Injection through covert DNS channel

In one of the engagements I was assigned an interesting case. The web application was obviously vulnerable to SQL injection, but WAF (web-application firewalls) were blocking any data exfiltration attempts. So the question arose how to get data? But we will start from the beginning. One of the POST search parameters appeared to be vulnerable