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Welcome to “cat root.txt” Write-ups

The contents of this blog are from my own experience and methodology on how I solved rooms in tryhackme.com and rooted boxes in hackthebox.eu. This is my personal blog and in no way I am getting paid by both hacking education platforms. THM and HTB do not recommend write-ups to be published in public when a room or box is new. THM room creators normally don’t want any spoilers, hints or write-ups within 3 days of releasing the room. For HTB, the box needs to be retired before write-ups get posted.

Entries:

CyberDefenders: BlackEnergy

This Blue Team challenge was released on February 19, 2023 from CyberDefenders.org. You can access the room at https://cyberdefenders.org/blueteam-ctf-challenges/99#nav-questions. Shoutout to @HouseOfStark for creating the challenge and also for being so responsive and kind in entertaining questions and inquiries about the challenge on Discord. I’ve had interactions with other creators where they just shrugged their…

How to Setup Your Own Malware Analysis Box – Cuckoo Sandbox

I am writing this blog entry because I know I was not the only one who had trouble setting up my own malware analysis box – Cuckoo. I have tried many tutorials, both written and video recorded, and I could never make it work. Finally, I decided to work on it until I came up…

Try Hack Me: b3dr0ck

This room was released on 8/26/2022 and is rated medium in difficulty. Shout-out to the room creator, @F11snipe. You can access the room at https://tryhackme.com/room/b3dr0ck. Scenario: Barney is setting up the ABC web server and using TLS certs to secure connections, but he’s having trouble. Here’s what we know: He established Nginx on port 80,…

LetsDefend: Memory Dumper

Another good challenge from LetsDefend.io and kudos to this challenge creator, 0xCyberJunkie.sh. You can access the challenge through this link. I intentionally masked part of the answers so you will have to do the necessary steps to see the entirety of the the answers. Scenario: A Windows endpoint was recently compromised. Thanks to the cutting-edge…

LetsDefend: PDF Analysis

WARNING: Do not open/run the pdf file on your local machine because it is malicious. Use the sandbox to analyze the file. Scenario: An employee has received a suspicious email. The employee reported this incident and mentioned that they did not download or open the attachment as they found the email very suspicious. They wish…

CyberDefenders: Mr. Robot

Note: I started with using volatility on my Windows machine, and eventually, I transitioned to working on my Linux machine. Pardon me for screenshots from different OSes. The first task in this challenge is to convert the VMWare Suspended State (.vmss) files to a memory dump so we can perform memory analysis. There is a…

CyberDefenders: DetectLog4j-CTF

This challenge was released on 01/16/2022 from CyberDefenders. You can access the room at https://cyberdefenders.org/labs/86. This is another blueteam challenge. The skills/tools to be tested and needed to complete this challenge are Autopsy or FTK Imager, dnSpy, VirusTotal, and PowerShell. I hope you will find my write-up helpful. What is the computer hostname?vcw65 What is…

Try Hack Me: Conti

This room was released on 1/7/2021 and it is rated Medium in difficulty. Shou-out to the room creator, @heavenraiza who also recognized Bohan Zhang for the challenge. You can access the room at https://tryhackme.com/room/contiransomwarehgh. This is a blueteam challenge. The skills/tools to be tested and needed to complete this challenge are Splunk and Googling. I…

CyberDefenders: BSidesJeddah-Part2 (Memory Image Forensics)

This challenge was released on 12/14/2021 from CyberDefenders. You can access the room at https://cyberdefenders.org/labs/82. This is another blueteam challenge. The skills/tools to be tested and needed to complete this challenge are 99% between volatility2 and volatility3, and 1% Googling, MITRE, Crackstation, and CyberChef. In this challenge, you will gain a better appreciation of how…

Try Hack Me: Carnage

This room was released on 11/25/2021 and it is rated medium in difficulty. Shout-out to the room creators, RussianPanda [She/Her] and Heavenraiza. You can access the room at https://tryhackme.com/room/c2carnage. This is another blueteam side of the cybersecurity field. The skills/tools to be tested and needed to complete this challenge are WireShark, VirusTotal, and Malware and…

Try Hack Me: Squid Game

This room was released on 11/11/2021 and it is rated hard in difficulty. Shout-out to the room creators, @RussianPanda [She/Her] and @heavenraiza. You can access the room at https://tryhackme.com/room/squidgameroom. This is room is more on the blue side of the cybersecurity field. The skills/tools to be tested and needed to eliminate the five attackers in…

How to Upgrade OpenSSH on Linux

This is a walk-through on how to upgrade your version of OpenSSH. One of the main reasons why an organization needs to upgrade their OpenSSH server is when there are vulnerabilities found on older versions, especially findings from Security Rating solutions providers such as BitSight, SecurityScorecard, and even just Shodan. Everything that I have found…

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About Me

TryHackMe

Hi, I go by “lightkunyagami” in the infosec/pentesting world. I am a husband to an amazing wife, a father to two wonderful kids. I work full-time as a Security Analyst for an organization in Salt Lake City, UT, and also an Airman in the U.S. Air Force. I am a regular on both tryhackme.com and hackthebox.eu, but mostly THM lately.

This blog will typically contain write-ups of rooms from tryhackme.com and boxes from hackthebox.eu.

For questions, email me at inquiries@beginninghacking.net

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