HackTheBox - Cypher (Protected)

02-03-2025

— Written by hg8 — 1 min read

Cypher is a Medium difficulty Linux machine on HackTheBox. It presents a well-crafted challenge focused on analyzing a custom web application and its unique backend. The initial foothold requires careful enumeration to discover and analyze a key application component, which is essential for uncovering a █████████████ vulnerability. Privilege escalation involves a misconfigured █████████████ for a non-standard binary. Exploiting █████████████ requires understanding its functionality and how to leverage its ████████████████████ to gain root access. Overall, Cypher is an excellent and logical machine that I highly recommend for those looking to practice code analysis and creative exploitation.

Tl;Dr: █████████████

This machine is currently active on HackTheBox. Following HTB’s retirement policy, this write-up will be made publicly available once the box is retired.

In the meantime, if you’re working on this box and want to discuss hints or need a nudge, feel free to connect with me and other HTB players over on the official HackTheBox Discord server. My username there is @_hg8 :)

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