Reddish is one of my favorite boxes on HTB. The exploitation wasn’t that difficult, but it required tunneling communications through multiple networks, and operate in bare-bones environments without the tools I’ve come to expect. Reddish was initially released as a medium difficulty (30 point) box, and after the initial user blood took 9.5 hours, and root blood took 16.5 hours, it was raised to hard (40). Later, it was upped again to insane (50). To get root on this box, I’ll start with an instance of node-red, a javscript browser-based editor to set up flows for IoT. I’ll use that to get a remote shell into a container. From there I’ll pivot using three other containers, escalating privilege in one, before eventually ending up in the host system. Throughout this process, I’ll only have connectivity to the initial container, so I’ll have to maintain tunnels for communication.

Microphones and cameras lurk everywhere. You may want to slip on some privacy armor.