This VulnHub writeup is based on Straylight - part one of the excellent Wintermute 1 series found on Vulnhub, created by creosote. The Wintermute 1 series is designed to be similar to some of the challenges presented by the ‘OSCP’ (Offensive Security Certified Professional) labs. Skills such as pivoting are really put to the test in the series, and it certainly ticked the box for me in terms of learning new stuff.

I’ve recently been approached to help introduce some new folk to the wonderful world of ethical hacking. The assumption is that they may know about the basic theory behind the stages of rooting a target, but have little by way of hands-on experience. Ideally I want to do something that can be completed in a group scenario where everyone can play along and achieve root in a couple of hours tops.

‘Stapler’ is the second machine from Vulnhub.com that I looked at as part of my OSCP preparations. This one just requires good enumeration skills and leaving no stone unturned. This is a lesson I learned after discovering two different ways for privesc. I had been reading other writeups on this box and then I learned a third way of compromising this machine. I obviously hadn’t read notes posted on Vulnhub by the author, and neither did I pay FULL attention to the output from my enumeration tools.

‘Fristileaks’ is the first of my efforts to exploit Vulnhub.com machines as part of my OSCP preparations. I needed some additional machines to help fine tune my methodology to do things as ‘surgically’ as possible without getting stuck down pointless rabbit holes. I love reading the stuff from abatchy and I decided to get stuck into their recommendations for ‘OSCP-like Vulnhub VMs’ I like to go into lots of (hopefully) useful detail in a progressive manner, starting with an overview and then getting more into the nuts and bolts.