HTB CPTS: Study session (Note taking apps, Webserver tools, Shells)

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In this series I'm preparing for highly hands on certification - Hack The Box Certified Penetration Testing Specialist.
Organization must have efficient yet effective policy implementation for information security. Risk management process can help: StepExplanation Identifying the RiskIdentifying risks the business is exposed to, such as legal, environmental, ma...
Intro IoT nowadays is everywhere. Now there’s about 20 billion IoT devices. In 2031 there will be around 35 billion IoT devices connected to the internet. Interesting information about IoT devices & other stuff When more network devices we have and m...

Intro When I was learning cybersecurity topics in the past year, I’ve grasped lots of different tools and techniques. Some of the most iconic for me were: CAN BUS (controller area network) Radio Frequency Cryptography I was lucky to have an oppo...

What is Enumeration? It is one of the most important parts of Penetration Testing process. It is identifying all of the ways we could attack a target. We must do our best in this phase. Long story short - enumeration is collecting as much information...

Transferring files During any penetration testing exercise, it is likely that we will need to transfer files to the remote server. There are few options for this: One method is running a Python HTTP server on our machine and then using wget or cUR...

Privilege Escalation Once we gain initial access to a box, we want to thoroughly enumerate the box to find any potential vulnerabilities we can exploit to achieve a higher privilege level. There are checklists for privilege escalation online. A goo...

Cyber Journey
41 posts
Notepad++
GitBook (has fetures to host a page or make wiki page)
Cherrytree
Evernote
Sublime Text
Notion
Visual Studio Code
It is important to make sure that any client data is only stored locally and not synced to the cloud if using one of these tools on real-world assessments.
Every infosec professional should maintain a knowledge base.
Start early with documentation.
There are some really useful NMAP scripts for use. They are located at:
/usr/share/nmap/scripts/
Syntax for using NMAP scripts is:
nmap --script <script name> -p<port> <host>
A good tool for bruteforcing community string names is onesixtyone.
To find hidden files or directories on the webserver that are not intended for public access we can use these tools:
ffuf
GoBuster
whatweb
curl - it is also important to be familiar with curl usage methods
It is important to get familiar with HTTP status codes. We can find them here
| Type of Shell | Method of Communication |
Reverse Shell | Connects back to our system and gives us control through a reverse connection. |
Bind Shell | Waits for us to connect to it and gives us control once we do. |
Web Shell | Communicates through a web server, accepts our commands through HTTP parameters, executes them, and prints back the output. |
Reverse Shell is the most common type of shell.
Web shell is typically a web script like PHP or ASPX that accepts our command through HTTP request.
| Web Server | Default Webroot |
Apache | /var/www/html/ |
Nginx | /usr/local/nginx/html/ |
IIS | c:\inetpub\wwwroot\ |
XAMPP | C:\xampp\htdocs\ |
A great benefit of a web shell is that it would bypass any firewall restriction in place, as it will not open a new connection on a port but run on the web port on 80 or 443, or whatever port the web application is using.
Another great benefit is that if the compromised host is rebooted, the web shell would still be in place, and we can access it and get command execution without exploiting the remote host again.