Aurora — Web Breach
Aurora Corp left a legacy admin panel online. Prove that an exposed backup allows unauthorised access and retrieve the user flag.
Lab 4 of 7 in the Web Exploitation path. If you get stuck you have 3 hints, from the vaguest to the most precise: they cost 0, 50 and 200 XP.
What you learn
Objectives complete themselves while you work in the terminal; each one is worth experience points:
- Map ports and services (150 XP)
- Find the /backup directory (200 XP)
- Log into the admin panel (300 XP)
Topics: web, enumeration, owasp-a01.
Commands you will use
The terminal is simulated and understands about forty Linux commands. In this lab you will mostly need these:
nmap: discovers the live hosts of a network and the open ports of a machine, with services and versions. Defenders use it to compare the real network with the inventory.gobuster: automatically tries a list of folder and page names on a website, to find what no link shows.curl: makes HTTP requests from the terminal and shows the server’s raw answer, headers included.
The simulated environment
The target is an invented host on a simulated private network: you can only reach it from the game terminal.
The target exposes these services:
- SSH: encrypted remote command-line access; it is protected with keys instead of passwords and without direct root login.
- Web (HTTP): a web server with pages, APIs or admin panels: the most exposed part of almost every organisation.
The defensive lesson
Once the lab is solved, the write-up explains what went wrong and how to protect yourself:
This is OWASP A01: Broken Access Control, combined with sensitive file exposure. Defensive lesson: never leave backups/dumps in the web root, rotate leaked credentials, segment admin panels.
Before and after this lab
To unlock it you must have solved:
- The cookie that is trusted too much (Web Exploitation, medium)
- Who's on the network? (Recon & Scanning, medium)
After this lab you can move on to:
- The complete portal (Web Exploitation, hard)
The Web Exploitation path
Web Exploitation brings the basics into the world of websites and web applications, where a huge share of real attacks happen. You explore invented sites with HTTP requests from the terminal and discover folders someone hoped to hide, cookies the server trusts too much, factory credentials never changed, comments forgotten in the page source and error messages that say too much. The lessons follow the OWASP Top 10 categories, such as Broken Access Control and authentication failures, and each one explains the fix.