03 / NETWORK & WEB ASSESSMENT
Black-Box Penetration Testing
Assessed the target without prior source-code knowledge, moving from reconnaissance and directory enumeration to controlled command-injection validation.
Lab environment
EH vulnerable machine (192.168.56.105), Ubuntu 24.04 Attackbox (192.168.56.104), isolated vboxnet0 network.
Assessment highlights
- Identified SSH, Telnet, HTTP and an undocumented service on port 6464 during full-port scanning.
- Gobuster discovered WordPress, phpMyAdmin and other web paths.
- Input fuzzing showed that the DNS utility accepted special characters without validation.
- Controlled testing confirmed command injection and execution as the web-server account.
- The assessment also identified weak filesystem permissions and exposed credential material in the lab target.
Security impact
The report demonstrates a complete attack chain from unauthenticated web input to interactive shell access in the deliberately vulnerable environment.
Recommendations
- Remove shell execution from the DNS lookup feature.
- Allowlist valid domain-name input.
- Apply least privilege to the web service account.
- Review exposed legacy services and sensitive filesystem permissions.
- Monitor and log suspicious input and exploitation attempts.
Lab scope: This case study describes coursework performed against intentionally vulnerable systems in an isolated environment.