Basic Pentesting 2

About this target

Basic Pentesting 2 is the follow-up to the box that teaches everyone the enumeration loop, and it earns its easy rating by being fair, not by being small. It runs a real spread of services. The way in is not one clever trick. It is a single loose credential you only find because you enumerated everything, then a privilege escalation that chains one user into the next until you land on root.

Your two objectives: get a user shell and read user.txt (user), then escalate all the way to root and read root.txt (root).

The loop

1. Find the target on your lab network.
2. Map every open port and identify each service and version.
3. Turn the softest service into a shell (user).
4. Enumerate from the inside and chain your way to root (root).

The trap on this box is stopping the port scan too early. The service that matters is not the first one you see. Scan all of it, read every version string, and the weak spot shows itself.

Work it yourself first. The hints are here when you are genuinely stuck, and each one costs points, so earn them.