Ippsec attacks the testimonial GRPC webapp by @ippsec | Hack The Box
Source: YouTube · Hack The Box · published Mar 25, 2025 · 28:25
This video demonstrates solving a cybersecurity challenge involving a path traversal vulnerability in a gRPC service to access restricted files and capture the flag 0:00-0:33.
Key Takeaways:
• The testimonial challenge features a web application with two ports: 45775 for the frontend and 53754 for a gRPC service 1:03-1:55.
• The application uses Go with Chi router, Temple templating, and Air for hot reloading, creating files in the public testimonials directory 2:34-5:58.
• A path traversal vulnerability exists in the gRPC service where customer input can be used to write files outside the intended directory 13:01-14:24.
• By modifying the Temple template through path traversal, the application rebuilds automatically and can be exploited to read restricted files 20:49-22:46.
• The final exploit involves writing a modified template that reads and displays the flag file from the root directory 26:55-28:21.
The presenter successfully demonstrates the entire exploitation process, from analyzing the application to crafting the exploit that retrieves the flag, showcasing practical gRPC security testing techniques.
Sources:
- 0:00-0:33 Introduction to the testimonial challenge
- 1:03-1:55 Examining the web application ports
- 2:34-5:58 Analysis of application technologies
- 13:01-14:24 Path traversal vulnerability explanation
- 20:49-22:46 Template modification technique
- 26:55-28:21(
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First 800 characters of the transcript
what is going on everyone this is IPC and I hope you've been enjoying cyber apocalypse 2025 so far for my workshop I'm going to be covering a challenge I had made for last year's cyber apocalypse and that is the testimonial challenge now when I created this challenge I wanted to keep the exploitation simple but use a lot of new technologies that people may not be familiar with because that's one of my favorite things about ctfs and that is finding new things that you're not familiar with researching them a little bit and then applying some previous like exploitation things that you know to the new technology so with that being said let's just get into it um you can play The testimonia Challenge on the main platform it's under challenges and we're going to click Start Challenge and then als…