Week 1

A part of a group of 3, I attempted to gain information about a local small business using passive recon techniques.

Some notes on the techniques and resources used can be found in the Quick Notes page Penetration Testing: Passive Recon.

When I first got access to the Kali VM, I figured that it would be faster to forcibly change the preconfigured account's password by booting into single-user mode, rather than look up the default out-of-the-box. I then searched the file system for all occurrences of the string champuser, and replaced most occurrences with eliminmax - only leaving occurrences in logs and in the backup files /etc/passwd-, /etc/shadow-, etc.

Chrome Remote Desktop

I attempted to access the Kali VM using Chrome Remote Desktop, but the account I intended to use was disabled for some reason. The assignment explicitly recommends using an alternate Google account, and I'd created one last semester. I do not recall using it for any purpose beyond this assignment last semester.

This puts me in a bit of a tough spot - when I create a Google account, I need to provide my phone number. It's my understanding that should too many accounts be connected to the same number, they get flagged as potential spambots, so I'd rather not create another account without a good reason to. Using an account that actually matters to me - such as my primary personal or school accounts seems unwise as well - if connecting to a Kali VM with Chrome Remote Desktop got an account banned once, why risk the same outcome for an account I can't afford to risk losing?

I ultimately set up a RustDesk server, and connected through that. That sucked, and I uninstalled all traces of it as soon as I'd completed the lab - way too many things seemed off about it with regards to its security hygiene, though I do not have any direct evidence of any actual compromise.