TryHackMe Writeup: Game Zone

7 min readJun 16, 2023

Welcome ! In this blog we gonna look at game zone room from Tryhackme. I’m writing this blog so as to properly understand what I’m doing , as well can be help to someone if they get stuck somewhere.

Room Link: https://tryhackme.com/room/gamezone

Task 1 Deploy the vulnerable machine

This room will cover SQLi (exploiting this vulnerability manually and via SQLMap), cracking a users hashed password, using SSH tunnels to reveal a hidden service and using a metasploit payload to gain root privileges.
Answer the questions below

Deploy the machine and access its web server.

Ans: No answer needed

What is the name of the large cartoon avatar holding a sniper on the forum?

Ans : Agent 47

Task 2 Obtain access via SQLi

In this task you will understand more about SQL (structured query language) and how you can potentially manipulate queries to communicate with the database.

Answer the questions below

SQL is a standard language for storing, editing and retrieving data in databases. A query can look like so:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username AND password := password

In our GameZone machine, when you attempt to login, it will take your inputted values from your username and password, then insert them directly into the query above. If the query finds data, you’ll be allowed to login otherwise it will display an error message.

Here is a potential place of vulnerability, as you can input your username as another SQL query. This will take the query write, place and execute it.

Ans : No answer needed

ameZone doesn’t have an admin user in the database, however you can still login without knowing any credentials using the inputted password data we used in the previous question.

Use ‘ or 1=1 — — as your username and leave the password blank.

When you’ve logged in, what page do you get redirected to?

Ans : portal.php

Task 3 Using SQLMap

SQLMap is a popular open-source, automatic SQL injection and database takeover tool. This comes pre-installed on all version of Kali Linux or can be manually downloaded and installed here.

There are many different types of SQL injection (boolean/time based, etc..) and SQLMap automates the whole process trying different techniques.

We’re going to use SQLMap to dump the entire database for GameZone.

Using the page we logged into earlier, we’re going point SQLMap to the game review search feature.

First we need to intercept a request made to the search feature using BurpSuite.

Save this request into a text file. We can then pass this into SQLMap to use our authenticated user session.

-r uses the intercepted request you saved earlier
— dbms tells SQLMap what type of database management system it is
— dump attempts to outputs the entire database

SQLMap will now try different methods and identify the one thats vulnerable. Eventually, it will output the database.

In the users table, what is the hashed password?

Ans : ab5db915fc9cea6c78df88106c6500c57f2b52901ca6c0c6218f04122c3efd14

What was the username associated with the hashed password?

Ans : agent47

What was the other table name?

Ans : post

Task 4 Cracking a password with JohnTheRipper

John the Ripper (JTR) is a fast, free and open-source password cracker. This is also pre-installed on all Kali Linux machines.

We will use this program to crack the hash we obtained earlier. JohnTheRipper is 15 years old and other programs such as HashCat are one of several other cracking programs out there.

This program works by taking a wordlist, hashing it with the specified algorithm and then comparing it to your hashed password. If both hashed passwords are the same, it means it has found it. You cannot reverse a hash, so it needs to be done by comparing hashes.

If you are using a low-powered laptop, you can deploy a high spec’d Kali Linux machine on TryHackMe and control it in your browser.

Deploy your own here!

Once you have JohnTheRipper installed you can run it against your hash using the following arguments:

hash.txt — contains a list of your hashes (in your case its just 1 hash)
— wordlist — is the wordlist you’re using to find the dehashed value
— format — is the hashing algorithm used. In our case its hashed using SHA256.

What is the de-hashed password?

Ans : videogamer124

Now you have a password and username. Try SSH’ing onto the machine.

What is the user flag?

Ans : 649ac17b1480ac13ef1e4fa579dac95c

Task 5 Exposing services with reverse SSH tunnels

Reverse SSH port forwarding specifies that the given port on the remote server host is to be forwarded to the given host and port on the local side.

-L is a local tunnel (YOU ← CLIENT). If a site was blocked, you can forward the traffic to a server you own and view it. For example, if imgur was blocked at work, you can do ssh -L 9000:imgur.com:80 user@example.com. Going to localhost:9000 on your machine, will load imgur traffic using your other server.

R is a remote tunnel (YOU → CLIENT). You forward your traffic to the other server for others to view. Similar to the example above, but in reverse.

We will use a tool called ss to investigate sockets running on a host.

If we run ss -tulpn it will tell us what socket connections are running

ArgumentDescription-tDisplay TCP sockets-uDisplay UDP sockets-lDisplays only listening sockets-pShows the process using the socket-nDoesn’t resolve service names

How many TCP sockets are running?

Ans : 5

We can see that a service running on port 10000 is blocked via a firewall rule from the outside (we can see this from the IPtable list). However, Using an SSH Tunnel we can expose the port to us (locally)!

From our local machine, run ssh -L 10000:localhost:10000 <username>@<ip>

Once complete, in your browser type “localhost:10000” and you can access the newly-exposed webserver.

Note this : you have to start the ssh tunel on different port