Inception

Verified writeups for the Inception machine of Hack The Box

Inception

$ tldr DomPDF LFI → Squid proxy + WebDAV → cron apt pre-invoke

CVE / Bulletins: CVE-2014-2383 ↗

·	·
Operating system	Linux
Difficulty	Medium
Vector	Web
IP	10.10.10.67
Retirement date	2022-04-04
Skills	DomPDF Exploitation - Local File Inclusion (LFI) [CVE-2014-2383] Bash Scripting Abusing Squid Proxy Internal Port Discovery via Squid Proxy - Wfuzz Abusing WebDAV - WebShell (Using davtest) Creating a Forward Shell (Python Scripting) - Bypassing Firewall Rules PIVOTING Host Discovery && Port Discovery - Bash Scripting Abusing Cron Job - Apt Pre-Invoke Script (Privilege Escalation)

Writeups

Language	Author	Format	Link
🇪🇸 ES	S4vitar	Vídeo	Open
🇬🇧 EN	0xdf	Texto	Open
🇬🇧 EN	IppSec	Vídeo	Open

Skill resources

Curated documentation for each technique listed in the Skills column above. Sources: HackTricks, GTFOBins, PortSwigger, etc.

Skill	Source	Link
Local File Inclusion (LFI)	HackTricks	Open
Local File Inclusion (LFI)	PayloadsAllTheThings	Open
Port Forwarding / Pivoting	HackTricks	Open
WebDAV	HackTricks	Open
Directory fuzzing	HackTricks	Open

Related skills worth mastering

Remote File Inclusion (RFI) · Remote Code Execution (RCE) · IIS (Microsoft Web Server)

If you liked this machine, try

• Retired — Linux, Medium
• ServMon — Windows, Easy
• EarlyAccess — Linux, Hard
• OpenSource — Linux, Easy
• Waldo — Linux, Medium

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Last updated: 2026-06-07