The Template That Read the Disk
The file-transfer portal that Tideglow Logistics' partners upload to spent a morning returning host files it was never meant to publish, and finished it running an administrator session nobody had logged into. The root cause is CVE-2024-4040 in CrushFTP 10.6.0. Walk the access logs and firewall traffic step by step to trace how a client holding no credentials turned a request parameter into a read of the host, and that read into a takeover.
Start this operation
Investigation Tasks
Complete each task by investigating alerts and submitting your findings.
Brief: when a file server reads its own secrets
0The file-transfer portal our partners upload to started serving files that have nothing to do with file transfer this morning. Before tracing it, get oriented on the class of flaw you are about to walk through.
Spot the template-injection payload
20Several requests that morning were not asking for files the portal owns. One of them actually read a file off the host. Find it in the access log and submit the exact string that was placed in that request's path parameter.
Find the file that gave up the session tokens
15Reading a host file proved the attacker could reach outside the portal's own area. The next read went after something far more useful to them. Name the file that was pulled.
Trace where the admin session was replayed from
15Not every request that morning came from the same place. Submit the address that was using the stolen session.
Name the account the attacker became
10Once the stolen session was replayed, the portal itself answered the question of whose session it was. Read the evidence and name that account.
Map the initial access to MITRE ATT&CK
10Step back from the individual requests and label how the attacker first got in. Give the ATT&CK technique ID for that first step.
6 tasks · 70 points total
Training Tools
Skills You'll Build
Ideal for newcomers to SOC operations. Guided investigation with clear indicators.
Prerequisites
- No prior experience required
- Familiarity with SIEM concepts
- Familiarity with Firewall concepts
Ready to investigate?
More Operations
View allOneNote Attachment to RAT: A Guided First Investigation
A logistics contracts employee at Glacierline Freight opens an attachment that arrived in her inbox and clicks a button inside it. Minutes later her workstation is running something that appears on no software inventory and is talking to a host that no business process uses. Walk the email gateway records, the file artifacts and the endpoint process tree one step at a time, and work out for yourself which message carried the delivery, what landed on disk, and what ran.
Hijacked Discord Invite to ClickFix Loader: Tracing the Lure
A finance analyst at Halcyon Wealth Partners followed a recycled Discord invite that quietly redirected the browser to a fake verification page. They did what the page asked, and inside the hour the workstation was running a remote-access trojan alongside an info-stealer that shipped browser data straight out of the building. Walk the proxy, endpoint and firewall evidence step by step to trace the lure, the loader, the C2 beacon and the data theft.
The Backdoored Browser Extension: Following the C2 Beacon
A routine Chrome auto-update silently trojanized a productivity extension on a finance workstation at Halverson Logistics. The extension beaconed to an attacker C2 domain, harvested the analyst's session cookies and an API token, and exfiltrated them to a VULTR-hosted server. With no malware on disk, the proxy and firewall logs are the only trail. Walk them step by step to trace the beacon, the theft, and the exfiltration.