A penetration tester is reviewing the security of a web application running in an IaaS compute instance. Which of the following payloads should the tester send to get the running process credentials?
A penetration tester is reviewing the security of a web application running in an IaaS compute instance. Which of the following payloads should the tester send to get the running process credentials?
To retrieve running process credentials in an IaaS compute instance, particularly in an AWS EC2 setup, sending a payload to http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/ is a well-known method to access instance metadata, including IAM roles and credentials. This specific URL is used to access the instance metadata service, which contains various pieces of information about the instance, including sensitive credentials.
The answer is actually D. Look at question 292 about the curl http://169.254.169.254/latest as it reads from EC2 metadata and can retrieve IAM roles and credentials. The correct answer is D. file=http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/. This is a well-known method for retrieving metadata including credentials from an IaaS compute instance, specifically in AWS EC2 instances. The URL http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/ is a link-local address where AWS EC2 instances store metadata about the instance, including security credentials.
B. file=../../../proc/self/environ
B. file=../../../proc/self/environ: This payload attempts to traverse directories and access the /proc/self/environ file, which contains environment variables of the current process. These variables can include sensitive information such as credentials. Explanation: A. file=http://192.168.1.78?+document.cookie: This payload attempts to send the contents of the document’s cookies to an external server. It is generally used for stealing session cookies via cross-site scripting (XSS) and does not target local file access. C. file=’%20or%2054365=54365;––: This payload appears to be attempting an SQL injection attack. It is unrelated to accessing local files for process credentials. D. file=http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/: This payload targets the metadata service of a cloud instance (such as AWS). While it can retrieve metadata and credentials, it is specific to cloud environments and does not directly access local process credentials.
Found on a web hacking blog /proc = processs /self = process currently reading the file system /environ = keys to the castle pair these elements with a local file inclusion and you will have the credentials you are looking for.
is the correct answer
This payload is designed to exploit directory traversal vulnerabilities in web applications. By accessing /proc/self/environ, the attacker aims to read the environment variables of the process running the web server, which may contain sensitive information such as credentials.