Phil Almueti - Musings of an Engineer

Musings of an Engineer

Phil Almueti

Could You Recommend Some Training (For SRE/DevOps)

Could You Recommend Some Training (For SRE/DevOps)

Stephane Maarek got me a great head start on AWS stuff, and he's articulate enough that I was able to do it at 2x speed and understand the concepts. Unfortunately, or forutnately, the training is reflective of the multiple-choice questions that the certification is presented with - so

What Did A Hiatus Mean To Me

What Did A Hiatus Mean To Me

This post started years ago as a reflection of a year I had taken off from side projects, side hustles, and any project that wasn't my day job. I'm now writing this on a cruise ship after 9 months of a break from the day-job as

AoCyber: Part 2 Take 2

AoCyber: Part 2 Take 2

TL;DR: Root the webcam with directory traversal and buffer overflow, use that to pivot to CyberPolice network with proxy hops and NoSQLi to get the yeti keys.

AoCyber: Side Quest 2 Part 1

AoCyber: Side Quest 2 Part 1

TL;DR: Path traverse through /images/ to get to the live view page with the flag.

AoCyber: Side Quest 3 Part 2

AoCyber: Side Quest 3 Part 2

TL;DR: Using the root shell, update the VNC password on the host home directory to access a desktop.

AoCyber: Side Quest 2 Part 0

AoCyber: Side Quest 2 Part 0

TL;DR: Buy the real yeti charm from the vendor, and null terminate the values to match what the ghost NPC tells you about the legend. Finish it off with the konami code to get your QR.

AoCyber: Side Quest 3 Part 1

AoCyber: Side Quest 3 Part 1

TL;DR: Use VIM or Nano to browse to a shell that's loaded on every connection, and add to it a shell that's somewhere unexpected on the system. Then connect and browse to a root PID proc root folder.

AoCyber: Side Quest 2 Part 2

AoCyber: Side Quest 2 Part 2

TL;DR: NoSQL inject an unprotected login path until you get the admin index.php.

AoCyber: Side Quest 2 Part 3

AoCyber: Side Quest 2 Part 3

TL;DR: Local load the EMUX IOT demonstration and buffer overflow the terrible webs proxy to get a reverse shell.

AoCyber: Side Quest 3 Part 0

AoCyber: Side Quest 3 Part 0

TL;DR: Un-Acropolypse the cropped image from the chat conversation.

AoCyber: Side Quest 1

AoCyber: Side Quest 1

TL;DR: Use Wireshark, Aircrack-ng the wifi password, grab the b64 encoded PFX from mimikatz output in the capture, then find the clipboard data.

AoCyber: Side Quest 4

AoCyber: Side Quest 4

TL;DR: Find the git commit with the QR, SQL inject to generate a URL to SSRS the files needed to generate the Werkzeug PIN. Then use the python terminal to generate a reverse shell, find mcskidy's poor password hygiene, then hijack the sudo check script to get root.

Advent of Cybersecurity 2023

Advent of Cybersecurity 2023

TryHackMe puts on an annual security 101 suite of educational content aimed at novice level IT hobbyists/professionals with great detailed prompts, guides, and curated environments for a safe place to explore the world of cyber security. The Advent of Cyber. This year started out very similar to last years,

Common Commands

Common Commands

Someone asked me today: "What are some common Linux commands that I should know to get around the OS" and I decided to just give them what I used. Between myself and a fellow engineer, we invented the following lists from our environments (for better or for worse)

What Does It Mean To Be An Imposter?

I don't want to call this "Imposter Syndrome". While technically this is what I'm going to share my thoughts on, I think in some cases folks really are imposters, as they are both inexperienced AND in an experience-driven role; so they cry: "Imposter