https://mdunn99.com/tags/bruteforce/Recent content in Bruteforce on Mike's LogsHugoen<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CC BY-NC 4.0</a>Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://mdunn99.com/posts/monitorsfour-htb/Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://mdunn99.com/posts/monitorsfour-htb/<p>This assessment followed a black-box approach, beginning with active reconaissance, progressing through enumeration, initial unprivileged foothold into the authorized target, and finally privilege escalation. <a href="https://www.hackthebox.com/machines/MonitorsFour">MonitorsFour is a HackTheBox &ldquo;easy Windows&rdquo; challenge</a>.</p> <h1 id="reconnaissance">Reconnaissance</h1> <p>Port and service scanning was performed on the target using <code>nmap.</code> It revealed an HTTP (insecure) webserver and a Microsoft HTTPAPI server, confirming the fact that this IP is associated with a Microsoft machine.</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;"><code class="language-bash" data-lang="bash"><span style="display:flex;"><span>80/tcp open http nginx </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>|_http-title: Did not follow redirect to http://monitorsfour.htb/ </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>5985/tcp open http Microsoft HTTPAPI httpd 2.0 <span style="color:#f92672">(</span>SSDP/UPnP<span style="color:#f92672">)</span> </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>|_http-title: Not Found </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>|_http-server-header: Microsoft-HTTPAPI/2.0 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>Service Info: OS: Windows; CPE: cpe:/o:microsoft:windows </span></span></code></pre></div><p>Enumeration on files and pages from the root directory of the resolved domain name (monitorsfour.htb) revealed information like a <code>login</code> and <code>user</code> path:</p>