RE

Verified writeups for the RE machine of Hack The Box

RE

$ tldr Office macro phishing → WinRAR ACE exploit → GHIDRA XXE privesc

·	·
Operating system	Windows
Difficulty	Hard
Vector	Web
IP	10.10.10.144
Retirement date	2020-02-01
Skills	Creating a malicious office document (libreoffice) - Playing with Macros Macros Obfuscation - Bypassing YARA Rules ConPtyShell - Enhancing our console mobility Abusing defined task in the system Malicious Ace files for WinRAR < 5.70 beta 1 - WinRAR Exploitation (Evil-WinRAR-Gen) IIS ASPX WebShell through WinRAR Exploitation GHIDRA Exploitation - XXE Vulnerability (XML External Entity Injection) [Project Handling] Intercepting NetNTLM-v2 hash through the XXE Cracking Hashes Abusing WinRM - Evil-WinRM Playing with Invoke-Command to execute commands as a user whose credentials we know PowerUp System Recognition Abuse UsoSvc - Creating a new user [Privilege Escalation] Manipulating system logs to grant privileges to the newly created user (Psexec)

Writeups

Language	Author	Format	Link
🇪🇸 ES	S4vitar	Vídeo	Open
🇪🇸 ES	El Pingüino de Mario	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
XML External Entity	HackTricks	Open
Cracking Hashes (hashcat / John)	HackTricks	Open
IIS (Microsoft Web Server)	HackTricks	Open
Remote Code Execution (RCE)	HackTricks	Open

Related skills worth mastering

Local File Inclusion (LFI) · Server-Side Request Forgery · Brute Force / Rate-Limit Bypass · WebDAV · Remote File Inclusion (RFI) · Shellshock (CVE-2014-6271)

If you liked this machine, try

• Grandpa — Windows, Easy
• Granny — Windows, Easy
• Joker — Linux, Hard
• Conceal — Windows, Hard
• Schooled — Linux, Medium

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Last updated: 2026-07-27