Process of Entering and Penetrating the System

In this write-up, I will explain to you the hacking process that is carried out through the IP address using tools for cracking the username and password.

At the beginning, we have the IP address

, So when scanning the IP address by using:

nmap -sVC 172.20.31.180

The result showed that SSH port 22 was open.

SSH port (Port 22) is a port dedicated to the Secure Shell protocol, used to establish a secure remote connection with servers and systems. In exploitation scenarios, it is commonly targeted as an entry point when there are weak credentials or misconfigured security settings. An attacker may rely on force‑authentication attempts or exploit configuration vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access.

I attempted to connect:

ssh 172.20.31.180

It requested a password. Since I didn’t have one,

I performed a brute-force attack using Hydra.

The result revealed:

login: captain   password: shadow

I then connected successfully with:

ssh captain@172.20.31.180
# password: shadow

Now we are inside the system and we can search and find the files that are inside the system, Once inside, I checked my location:

pwd

Result:

/home/captain

showed a folder named files. I entered it:

ls -la

Inside, I found the file favorite_country.txt. So when I reviewed what the file favorite_country.txt contains using:

cat .favorite_country.txt

found that it contains the word italy, Which means that I am now inside the system and I have full permission to view the contents of the files.

It is also possible to know the number of lines used in the file itself through:

wc -w /home/captain/moment.txt

Result:

367 /home/captain/moment.txt

the number of lines: 367

Now we can search for any information inside the system, especially if we are looking for specific information inside the system.

I could get the last line directly with:

tail -n 1 /home/captain/emailpass.txt

Or display the whole file:

cat /home/captain/emailpass.txt

Result:

michel@securemail.hv:pf8Dkpfw24

Or find specific information such as the password that the file contains.

I searched for the line using grep:

grep "whoami@securemail.hv" /home/captain/emailpass.txt

Result:

whoami@securemail.hv:DeU8CHcpa2

It is also possible to find a specific path, for example the path hello

To find the path of the hello command, I used:

which hello

Result:

/usr/bin/hello

Or find a specific file such as

database.conf. We cannot use the which command because this search needs to cover the entire system. Therefore, I used the find command:

find / -name "database.conf" 2>/dev/null

Result:

/etc/config/database/database.conf

However, there are some files that may contain root privileges to access them, such as

When I tried:

cat /home/captain/favorite_movie.txt

I received Permission denied.

Since sudo was unavailable (-bash: sudo: command not found), I changed file permissions:

chmod +r favorite_movie.txt
cat favorite_movie.txt

Result:

Interstellar

And it is also possible to know the name or identifier of the device through which we entered

To find the UID, I used:

id -u specter

Result:

1001