hacktivity-vulns-exploits-lab

Writeup + CVE analysis + countermeasures for the Hacktivity 'Vulnerabilities, Exploits, and Remote Access Payloads' lab (netcat shells, Metasploit, CVE-2010-1240, CVE-2004-2687).

Contents

• writeup.md — the full step-by-step walkthrough, every command annotated with what it does and the output to expect
• analysis/ — deeper notes: bind vs. reverse shells, and a per-CVE breakdown (root cause, why it works, detection)
• defence/countermeasures.md — how to prevent, detect, and limit the blast radius of each attack (answers the lab's "what countermeasures?" self-study questions)
• reference/commands.md — condensed command reference
• evidence/ — where run screenshots and transcripts go

Lab environment

Three VMs on an isolated host-only network (10.x.x.x/24), provisioned per lab-set by the Hacktivity platform:

The last octet is stable per role (.2 / .3 / .4); the first three change with each lab set.

Skills demonstrated

• Payload theory: shellcode, staged vs. stageless, bind vs. reverse shells, and why reverse shells beat inbound-blocked firewalls and NAT
• Netcat for manual shell handling
• Metasploit Framework — msfconsole, module search, info / show options / set / check / run, multi/handler, msfvenom
• Client-side exploitation — generating a weaponised document and delivering it over a self-hosted web server
• Remote service exploitation — distcc_exec, TTY upgrade with python -c 'import pty; pty.spawn("/bin/bash")', basic post-exploitation
• Mapping each step to defensive controls and MITRE ATT&CK techniques

Authorisation

Everything here was performed against my own allocated, deliberately vulnerable training VMs on an isolated network, as part of a structured security-education lab. No third-party systems were touched. The CVEs are from 2004 and 2010 and are long since patched.

Attribution and licence

Original lab sheet: "Vulnerabilities, Exploits, and Remote Access Payloads" by Z. Cliffe Schreuders, Anatoliy Gorbenko, and Thalita Vergilio — Hacktivity Cyber Security Labs, Cybercrime and Security Innovation Centre, Leeds Beckett University. Source: https://hacktivity.co.uk · https://github.com/cliffe/HacktivityLabSheets

This writeup is my own explanatory text and analysis, built while working through that lab. Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 to match the original — see LICENSE.