Hit a bit of a lull the other day.

I started doing a bit of lab-wide scanning and enumeration. Trying to see how much information I could gather, without much effort.

Did some nmap scans using the entire lab range, looking for all sorts.

Managed to perform a zone transfer with DNS, and got some hostnames for within the Public network.

All was going well. Then I started on one of the boxes (just randomly chose it).

I spent a couple of hours last week, falling into the deep dark rabbit holes.

Going to bed super late, getting up for work and just feeling miserable and started saying to myself "do I even want to do this anymore". "I can't even get passed here, what chance do I have".

Anyway, yesterday, after a marathon 6-7 hours, I persevered and got through. Turns out this was one of the 'harder' boxes.

When I saw that first reverse shell come back to me, it was the greatest thing I had ever seen. I think I just sat there and stared at it for a while.

It was only a limited shell. But within about an hour or two. Again, beating me head against the wall!

I got that damn sexy ROOT shell, and boy did it feel good!

Anyway, this was my first non-windows rooted box, and not a point-and-click exploit. This has restored my faith, and it's time to push on!

--> n33dle