Blog - Page 36 of 54 - Hackercool Magazine

Posted on May 28, 2022February 14, 2024 by kanishka10

WordPress enumeration with Metasploit

Hello aspiring Ethical Hackers. In this article, readers will learn how to perform WordPress enumeration using Metasploit. WordPress is one of the most popular CMS available and as of 2021, 39.5% percent of websites are powered by WordPress. Hence gauging the security of WordPress installation is always important.

Metasploit has a few modules that can be used to perform WordPress Enumeration. Let’s see a few of them. The first module we will see is the WordPress Scanner module that scans for installed themes, installed plugins, installed WordPress version and more information about target WordPress.

Let’s see how this Module works. Start Metasploit and load the WordPress scanner module. Then, type command “show options” to see the options we require for this module. We are testing this module on WordPress installed on Ubuntu 20.

After all the options are set and the module is executed,

the module successfully detected the target WordPress version as 6.0. It also detected plugins installed on the target WordPress along with their versions. The module will also try to enumerate users although it failed to detect any users here.

This module can be useful to find if there are any vulnerabilities on the WordPress target. For example, one of the plugins installed on this target wp_pie_register has an exploit module related to it.

Some of the vulnerabilities in WordPress require credentials for successful exploitation. Metasploit also has a WordPress login enumeration module that not only helps in user enumeration but also brute forcing their password.

Load the WordPress user enumeration exploit as shown below. Type command “show options” to see the options this module requires.

Assuming we have no idea about any user credentials on the target machine, the first thing to do is enumerating and validating usernames. So set “bruteforce” option to false as shown below.

Validating usernames is a process where we check if a particular username is present on the target WordPress site. We can validate a single username or many usernames using a wordlist. For example, let’s use the wordlist “common.txt” as users file. We also want to set the STOP_ON_SUCCESS option to TRUE. This will stop the enumeration as soon as we get one valid username.

Let’s execute the module now.

The module found one valid username on the target. It’s “admin”. Since we have found one valid username on the target, lets try to find out the password for this user. For doing this, we need to set the options as shown below.

ENUMERATE_USERNAMES : FALSE

VALIDATE_USERS : FALSE

BRUTEFORCE : TRUE

We need to also set the password file for that is required for brute forcing. Since we now know the username, we set it using option “username” option.

We need to also set the password file for that is required for brute forcing. Since we now know the username, we set it using option “username” option.

The module found one successful LOGIN using credentials “admin : admin”. See how to perform WordPress Enumeration with WPScan.

Posted on May 18, 2022September 5, 2023 by kanishka10

Spring4Shell : Explained With POC

Hello, aspiring Ethical Hackers. In this article you will learn about Spring4shell, a new zero-day vulnerability that has been discovered in Spring Framework. Spring Framework is an open-source application framework for Java and is normally deployed with Apache Tomcat servers.

Vulnerability & Impact

There are two vulnerabilities affecting Spring Framework, one is in Spring Core and second is in Spring Cloud. The Spring Core RCE vulnerability impacts Java class objects. The vulnerability in Spring Core has been given name Spring4shell in the lines of Log4shell as both vulnerabilities affect a library. Although, it took its name from Log4shell, it is not as dangerous as its namesake.

This vulnerability affects all versions of Spring Core Framework running on JDK versions 9 and after. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2022-22965. There is another RCE in Spring Cloud Function versions <=3.1.6 and <=3.2.2.

Proof Of Concept

It’s time to see the exploitation of Spring4shell practically. Let’s create a new directory named spring4shell.

Clone the repository shown in the image below. This repository contains both vulnerable docker image and exploit.

Build the Docker image vulnerable to spring4shell as shown below.

You can check if the target is set or not by visiting the URL in browser.

If you get the above message, the target is ready. Run the exploit. The python exploit uploads a java web shell on the target after exploiting vulnerability.

The exploit completed successfully. The web shell can be accessed at above highlighted address.

The POC is succesful,

Posted on April 24, 2022December 23, 2023 by kanishka10

ms08-067 exploitation to hack Windows XP

Hello aspiring ethical hackers. In this article, we will see how to exploit ms08-067 vulnerability to hack Windows XP. As our readers may already know by now, ms08-067 is a vulnerability in Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. It is a critical vulnerability that allows remote code execution on the target Windows system by sending a specially crafted RPC request to it.

This vulnerability doesn’t require any authentication or even user interaction on the target side. That’s the reason why it is ubiquitous in any ethical hacking course. We have exploited this vulnerability recently in our February 2021 Issue. But that was done using without Metasploit.

In this article, we will do this with Metasploit. For this, we have chosen our target as Windows XP SP2 and our Attacker system as Kali Linux. Most of the Antivirus ended their support to Windows XP SP2 (Windows XP SP3 is the minimum supported version. Even Real world systems running Windows XP SP2 are running without Anti Virus.)

So Nmap scan revealed a Windows target as shown below.

Start Metasploit and load the ms08_067 module.

Set all the required options and use check command to see if the target is indeed vulnerable.

The target is indeed vulnerable. Now, execute the module as shown below.

As readers can see, we successfully got a meterpreter session with SYSTEM privileges.

Posted on April 13, 2022February 16, 2024 by kanishka10

Beginners guide to Packet sniffing

Hello, aspiring Ethical Hackers. In this blogpost, you will learn about packet sniffing. Data doesn’t get hacked when it is sitting on a computer or a hard disk. It also gets hacked when it is in transit between one system and another system over internet. For example, in 2008, the Heartland Payment Systems which is one of the world’s largest credit card payment processors was hacked by two Russian hackers. After gaining access, they placed sniffers within the Heartland system. Using these sniffers, they collected 130 million credit card credentials.

What is Packet Sniffing?

Packet sniffing is an act or method of monitoring, gathering or collecting data or information while it is in transit from one system to another system (usually from client to server). Since data or information is transferred over internet in the form of small network packets, it is known as Packet sniffing.

Types of Sniffing

Sniffing can be classified into two types. They are Passive sniffing and Active sniffing.

1. Passive Sniffing:

In this type of sniffing, we just observe or monitor the traffic going around the network. There is no need of injection of any additional traffic into the network. To do this, we should be able to view the traffic belonging to all the devices in the network. This is only possible when all the devices in the network are connected through a Network hub. In a network connected by a hub, all the devices can see the traffic sent to all other devices on the network.

2. Active Sniffing:

In this type of sniffing, additional traffic has to be injected into the network to begin sniffing. This type of sniffing is performed in network connected by a switch.

What is a Sniffer?

Packet sniffing can be performed using either software or hardware. The software or appliance used to perform sniffing is known as a sniffer.

Examples of software sniffers include Wireshark, Tcpdump, Windump, Ettercap, dsniff, Kismet, Driftnet and Network miner etc.

Examples of Sniffing attacks

1. Password Sniffing:

This is the simplest form of sniffing attack as in this type of sniffing, sniffers just collect the data in transit silently. Although, sniffers are looking to sniff on credentials. any data that is not encrypted before being transmitted between two devices can be sniffed on. For example, protocols like FTP, Telnet and HTTP etc. transmit all data including credentials in clear text. Learn more about password sniffing attack here.

2. DNS Cache Poisoning:

Also known as DNS poisoning or DNS spoofing, this attack involves poisoning the cache of a DNS server. A Domain Name Server (DNS) resolves host names to the IP addresses and vice versa. So, if a DNS cache is poisoned with malicious entries, any user trying to visit a genuine website may be redirected to a fake malicious website.

3. MAC Flooding:

In this type of sniffing attack, attacker sends a large amount of traffic to the network switch to fill the MAC address table using fake MAC addresses. When the MAC address table is full, the network switch behaves like a hub.

4. MAC Spoofing:

Also known as ARP spoofing or ARP poisoning, in this attack, the attacker tries to spoof the MAC address of another device like a switch. This results in all the devices on the networks thinking that attacker-controlled computer is the switch and start sending traffic to it.

5. TCP Session Hijacking:

In this sniffing technique, also known as Session Hijacking, attacker steals the user’s session ID and impersonates as that user.

6. JavaScript Card Sniffing:

In this type of sniffing attack, hackers take control of a website and make changes to the javascript by adding malicious lines of code to it. These changes are done to collect any valuable information, like credentials, credit card numbers and other information.

7. DHCP attacks:

In this attack, DHCP server is flooded by the attacker with fake DHCP requests to use all the allocated IP addresses for that network.

Posted on April 2, 2022February 26, 2025 by kanishka10

CVE-2022-25636 : Linux Privilege Escalation

Hello aspiring Ethical Hackers. In this article you will learn about another Linux Privilege Escalation vulnerability tracked as CVE-2022-25636 and its exploitation. I am saying another because this vulnerability comes immediately after recently discovered Linux Dirty Pipe vulnerability.

CVE-2022-25636 is a vulnerability that affects the Linux Netfilter component. What is netfilter? It is an open source framework provided by the Linux kernel that allows various networking-related operations to be implemented in the form of customized handlers. Its functions include packet filtering, network address translation and port translation. All Linux Firewall utilities i.e Iptables, nftables, ufw etc use Netfilter in their operations.

Exploitation of this vulnerability can give attackers root privileges on the target system, allow them to escape containers and in worst case induce a kernel panic. This vulnerability affects Linux kernel versions 5.4 to 5.6.10. The target OS include Ubuntu, Debian, RedHat etc.

However, there’s no clarity on which kernel versions are actually vulnerable. In my testing, this failed to work on Ubuntu 21.10 kernel version 5.13.0-10 but worked every time on Ubuntu 21.10 with kernel version 5.13.0-30 (without giving any panic). Let’s have a look at how the exploitation worked for me.

To exploit this privilege escalation vulnerability, anybody needs to have access on the target system with Low User Privileges as shown below.