slash root slash flag dot txt Solving the Relativity Vulnerable VM
foreword At the time of writing this post, this VM was part of a local security communities (zacon) pre-con challenge. Finding /root/flag.txt would have entered you into a draw for winning a prize :D However, the greater goal of the challenge was to learn something. I set out some time and attempted the challenge. Fortunately, I managed to complete it in time. So, this is the journey I took to solve this. You can now download and try this VM yourself over at VulnHub. Unzip, mount and boot the VM. Once the VM is booted, it should have an IP assigned via DHCP. I think it is interesting to note that I used a very limited set of tools to complete this. No bruteforcers, metasploits, vulnerability scanners and or fancy proxies were used. My toolset consisted out of netcat, nmap and other basic bash commands. There are probably a gazillion ways to do this as lots of this stuff is preference based on how they are approached. However, the basic ideas of the vulnerabilities remain the same. ...