TryHackMe! Abusing SETUID Binaries - Vulnversity 

18:00 Using python instead of the recommended tool reminds me those teachers really explains the answer to you rather than tell you that is the answer.

I had been struggling to escalate my privileges and you taught me how to do that in such an easy manner. You're amazing. Thank You!

Just finished Vulnversity. Your python script blew my mind! Got me wanting to ramp up my python skills. Thanks man!

I just wanna say, your the only channel I have with notifications turned on. I'm part of a security group but upper management. Basically I get the reports. Iv grown a large interest in how my subordinates conduct their pen testing. Watching you has 1. Impressed me and 2. taught me how my subordinates conduct their pen testing. Kudos with the python script.

I got stuck on the last step, ran out of the ideas, find similar approach to what you used but I didn't know the trick with stty so input gave me a lot of pain, so I eventually gave up :/ Now I can finally complete it! :D Great video, as always! :)

A half hour video and I will be spending hours taking notes. I really enjoy learning from you. Thanks.

Just did this box today, it was interesting to see the other ways we can use to address the challenges. Great Video!

John, thank you for such a comprehensive explanation and a fascinating adventure! It's a pleasure to watch your videos, I am really waiting for more your episodes of try hack me!

Thanks John! Been watching your videos for a month or so now and with a little help in that last bit (stabilizing the shell and actually running the service using systemctl) I just finished my first TryHackMe room. Sweet Victory!

I actually enjoyed these videos even though I'm just a newbie in this field. I look forward to seeing more of these!

It really helps when you have a solid understanding of networking, programming & basic linux fundamentals. I'm pretty sure a couple years ago i would of shat bricks and thought you were gandalf, even though you are basically gandalf, thank you

Doing the youtube algorithm thing. Tho I actually came for the video.

THANK YOU I WAS STUCK AND THIS HELPED ME SO MUCH!!! Your explanations and everything were clear, concise, and super helpful. A+ Thank you!!!

Thanks man! I'm loving the energy!

Definitely liked watching you do some "dirty coding" in python. And the "bash -p" trick was super clever, I never would have thought of that.

Thank you so much for the walkthrough. I was struggling so much with the systemctl step. I didn't realize I needed to stabilize the shell to make the GTFO script to work.

Bro, thank you very much for this detailed walk through. I just finished a homework with a privilege escalation exercise. This solidified everything I did and more. Keep the great content coming!

Loved the alternative ways you showed us. Thanks as always

dude you are so humble, I just love your videos and personallity!

19:10 man did that shit escaladed quickly lolll good stuff!

Hey, man! Thanks for explaining that python script, I would rather use python as well as it also helps to keep touch with the language or else we tend to forget things. These niche things like slapping the python script and explaining it makes me wanna watch these videos... Keep it up.. learning a lot

Just did the box yesterday , glad to see other way to get the allowed extension

Thanks for this, I had waited to finish the room before I watched this, and find your approach very helpful and instructive, especially replacing burp with a python script!

Hmm thank god the youtube algorirthm showed your channel, I'm a web dev and i wasn't that interested in cyber security but you got me hooked ! Please continue on the TryHackMe site as it is very well made and really accessible, even to n00bs like me !

So I have absolutely no idea what you’re doing, but it’s presented in such a way that I feel like I do. Either way, thoroughly enjoyable!

John, you are doing amazing job by creating these handholding sessions for Cyber Security professionals !! Many thanks to you. Keep up the great work!!

This is the best YT channel, hands down.

Thanks John, I really liked that method you showed to get a fully functioning reverse shell. I look forward to trying it out.

Really hand trick i didn't know about stabilising the shell using Python will be sure to use that a lot more often. Completed the room before watching your video as i like to do them without help. Awesome content regardless, I learn a lot from the way you think thanks for sharing :)

I love it when you take some detours and present showcases in python :)

Watching you code the Python script was super helpful. Thank you!

Perfect Technique John, thanks for your sharing. Love your clear explanation I am new in OSCP. Those skill helps me a lot.

Watching your video and actually understanding keeps me smiling. Thanks for the great explanation!

Tried at yesterday for the first time. Followed the same process untill I found systemctl. First tried to do prevesc using setuid but couldn't bcz I'm a massive noob. But then I exploited the vulnerability where systemctl can run process as any user to run bash as root and pipe it to my tun0. Then used netcat to reverse shell. But now I know where I did mistake while trying setuid stuff. THANK YOU.

Awesome video John! There was one thing I didn't quite understand, what did changing the ExecStart line do at the end? How come keeping the line the way it was wouldn't work?

Hey John! Thanks for the video. At around 19:29, you said "Ctrl Z to foreground that" but it looked more like you were sending the NC php shell to the background instead, especially since you sent it back to foreground after you did "stty raw -echo". Did you mean background and you said foreground by accident?

Hey John, thanks so much for this walk-through - awesome as always. I'm just wondering what was the though-process underpinning editing the standard script from GTFObins? I was able to do the whole machine blind until this part, and got stuck there for a good hour or so. very grateful for your insight but I feel like I cheated a bit by just copying your actions w/o understanding really what went into those edits. Thanks!

Did this box like an hour before watching this! Awesome video

Thanks for your videos man !! They are actually educational and like it makes sense so like thanks man ♥️♥️

It feels great to find that I can understand more of what you are doing lately!

Great stuff! Appreciate that you are adding some extra hints which i did't get in writeups, same for python. I noticed you are not closing files stream in for loop where you are checking different extensions upload. During scripting very often I don’t bother also :P but as we know as good practice we can use context managers like with statement or, f.close(). This is not the case here - but I just wonder does such unclose files may be some kind of vulnerability? Did you came across on that during challenges?

After watching this video , I am a great fan of you and want to become like you .

nice explanation, got here bcuz been stuck on that privesc part for several hours, got to learn something new, thanks

I was struggling with burp, got to learn python and it was so much easier. Of course with your code :P baby steps...baby steps.... thanks man im hooked on your vids.

So much knowledge in this video... Learnt a lot!

I've been using Linux in some capacity since 1998 and this is the first I've truly understood SUID.

wow, that was a beautiful walk through and a top $ explanation as I was having an issue understanding the last part about systmctl privesc part but you made it so much easy and the python script is top pro man, as burp didn't work as it showed all .php files as status 200 including the .phtml., where your script nailed it 100%.

Loved the Python script instead of BurpSuite - thanks for showing us that little trick!

Congrats to hit 100k in very advance !.

I loved the shoutout to Ippsec lol. Great channel man!

Love it! Please do more of these

many thanks to you John for the embedded python lesson

John, the last 3 or 4 minutes of that video, I could swear you melted a few keys!

Thank you for the bin/bash hint!!!

this is amazing to watch, even i don't understand any of this (actually a bit), but its interesting to watch, seriously i never skip the vid xD

AWESOME, i loved the python script, very instructive as always , thanks pal !!!

@JohnHammond I ve been following you sir for a very long time.. thank you for all the amazing help ur content has done not only to me but to so many..!!! you are just amazing at what you do.. and i wish this channel reaches over a million soon.so more people can benefit from your knowledge...!!! and also can you tell me how can i learn python specifically for cybersec.. i have good basics of python.. but cant script or understand exploits..can u help me where i can learn from.. thanks a lot..!!!!!!!

I would use command: lsof -nP | grep -i listen -> to check which user is running on port 3333

Great video, thank you. I learned a lot from you.

Really enjoyed that python scripting I would love to see more challenges solved that way. Been wanting more coding projects and tasks, thanks m8!

Kinda lost me at the end, with the suid part, particularly with running the bin/bash -p, but very cool nonetheless

For basic and amateurs . I like it

You are amazing bro!

Great videos as always. Only thing I could not get to work was the very last part. Copy & Pasting the code for systemctl. I did everything 3 times exactly as you did and every time I could not get it to get me root for whatever reason. I spent a couple hours banging my head and still couldn't get it to work. Lost for answers. Any ideas? I made sure that I had change to /home/bill dir before I copy&pasted. No idea. Thanks for making the videos!!

Thank you for the content! I just got into cybersecurity. I can't wait to see more. -Cheers

pressed Like button four times, this is how much i liked your video)

Gracias bro!, aprendí mucho

I came for John's haircut... And was not disappointed.

Thanks for the video!

Lol I just did this room! I actually uploaded a . service file and used systemctl to start a reverse shell as root but your methods seem so much more efficient! Just one question: what were those commands you used to make the first shell more stable?

💗I like your hairstyle too 💗

So I have a question / comment. One thing you didn't show since you didn't use burpsuite is how you would find the /internal/uploads folder. It's nice that the THM site provided that for you in it's hints section, but if this were a blank box without that hint, using your python script how would you have been able to tell where the .phtml file uploaded to to be able to run it? What tool, other than burp, would you have used to find where your reverse shell landed?

thank you for the video, really interesting and valuable

Gotta love that python demo ...

Hello John, it's been a while since that video but why does /bin/systemctl seems a little bit odd as you said?

Probably this is allowed havent touched python in a while but why not something like [f"php{i}" for i in range(1, 10)]+[...aditionals] This would "support" future versions if x function hasn't changed, easier to add multi support for additional list items also.

Well, when in Rome, smash the stack... wait, what? Sorry, wrong youtuber.... 👋 John. Welcome. Did u have time to unwind after VirSecCon? Amazing job. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Sure the sentiment is worldwide but most of your followers are using this evening (official beginning of the extended Marvel Universe weekend! Wait, what? Not Marvel? Sorry wrong weeke... 🥳) to catch up with the mentioned CTF and other beautiful challenges. And since I cheated last challenge (privesc) in Vulniversity I’ll just download this video and retreat to my den... Nice, John, nice 👍...

Your hair cut's great

I finnally learned how to do priv escalation, Im never able to pull it off but now you learned it me

awesome video 👍

Quick question, why did you check the body response rather than the HTTP response code in your python script? For example checking if the response was 200 or something else, I'd imagine it would return a 401 if it didn't allow the extension.

I am struggling with this one. Am a beginner. Still decided to watch a tutorial coz no shame in learning!

I've spent like hour and a half on this and have no idea how to escalate privileges and finish last question ,but seeing this I'm sure I can quit lol ,those python skills blew my mind ,but that shell tehnique ,w.e it was ,to go from "unstable" one to the other ,that killed me ,aight ,I'm out :D

Can you make video about how to make python scripts to do penetration testing and web application, it's really cool to be able to code on the fly without relying on Burp Suite.

Really liked that python skill. Can you plz make some dedicated videos teaching python script to do these thing. It will be helpfull for script kiddies like me

thanks sir

Oh man Thnks so much

"I ended up aliasing nano to vim".... I am speechless...

28:08 "...press the dislike button twice to let me know how much you hated it" lmao

Method question… when you find a file upload page is your first thought always a php reverse shell? And what drives the thought process? Thanks!

After you entered "stty raw -echo" what was your next step? It sounded like "specify fg"

I hope I can understand what you're doing one day, just got into tryhackme :)

thanks alot

Could you slow down, bro. it's like you're on speed lol. i like your vids as they are short, but taking a bit more time, especially with scripts would be nice. My brain may run a bit slower than yours! I watch a lot of IPPSEC and i find it more consumable as he moves around a lot less, explains his movements and takes the time to explain things. It would be awesome to hear your explain your keystrokes since you move quickly. Love your work :)

thanks bro

Any resource out there that would explain 26:28 ( "chmod +s /bin/bash") more? This is an awesome work around that is a time saver!

are you human? or god? You are amazing John! love your videos

John, please explain what you did at 19:17, I was able to replicate it, but I don't get it.

Damn you're so inspiring

So in order for your bin bash priv esc to work, you need another suid bit or something running as root to try and piggyback on?