Powershell, Automation and Infrastructure.
AOS Upgrade on ESXi from 6.5.2 to 6.5.3.6 hangs. Issue I have tried to upgrade my Nutanix CE 2.0 based on ESXi to a newer AOS version for a while and it has caused issues. After kicking off the upgrade, LCM starts a root task which hangs at 60%. The AOS upgrade for each node shows as cancelled in the tasks view and LCM stops responding. Symptoms LCM Root Task hung at 60% LCM Tasks for each CVM…
Deploy a Windows Template using Terraform to Nutanix AHV If you just want the template, check the github repo . This post assumes you already have a Windows image for your desired Server OS. The Autounattend.xml included here should work fine on Server 2016 through 2022 and will need some tweaks for a client OS. I build my AHV images using Packer and have one for each OS type. The Terraform…
Building Ubuntu Server 22.04 on vSphere with Packer While using my home lab, I regularly need a fresh Ubuntu Server to install test software. Rather than use the built in templating in vSphere, I wanted to use Packer to build an image so that I can include the regular software I use and have it always be up to date when I start using the server. I initially built the template using JSON, but since…
Vulnhub Writeup - Silky CTF 0x02 This is the first box on the OSWE track from TJNull’s infamous list You can download the box from Vulnhub Initial Scans nmap -sn 192.168.21.0/24 Running AutoRecon on the box sudo $(which autorecon) -vv 192.168.21.129 Open Ports PORT STATE SERVICE REASON VERSION 22/tcp open ssh syn-ack ttl 64 OpenSSH 7.4p1 Debian 10+deb9u6 (protocol 2.0) 80/tcp open http syn-ack ttl…
Super quick start guide for Ansible . This is a getting started guide only and should be sufficient to get you started writing playbooks for your lab environment. Before moving to production, security should be considered for the user account and roles should be reviewed for anything unexpected. With that said: sudo apt install ansible cd ~ mkdir ansible cd ansible The inventory The inventory is a…
AHV in Hyper-V AHV Running as a Hyper-V Guest VM Want to test out Nutanix Community Edition but don’t have the hardware handy? If you have a decent Hyper-V host then it’s possible to install CE inside a guest VM in Hyper-V. Unfortunately the ISO you can download direct from Nutanix fails when checking for network interfaces during the install. Attempting to install straight from the ISO with…
Azure AD Connect Sync fails to synchronise with Event ID 6311 Issue ADSync Event ID 6311 in the Application event log The server encountered an unexpected error while performing a callback operation. "BAIL: MMS(4472): X:\bt\1011518\repo\src\dev\sync\shared\framework_mixedmodeutils\CompressionUtils.cpp(371): 0x80004005 (Unspecified error): Unicode surrogate characters must be written out as pairs…
Vulnhub - Glasgow Smile Vulnhub Writeup - Glasgow Smile 1.1 Description Title: Glasgow Smile Users: 5 Difficulty Level: Initial Shell (Easy) - Privileges Escalation (Intermediate) Hint: Enumeration is the key. If you are a newbie in Penetration Testing and afraid of OSCP preparation, do not worry. Glasgow Smile is supposed to be a kind of gym for OSCP machines. The machine is designed to be as…
Vulnhub - Prime Series 1 Writeup.md Vulnhub Writeup - Prime Series 1 Description This machine is designed for those one who is trying to prepare for OSCP or OSCP-Exam. This is first level of prime series. Some help at every stage is given. Machine is lengthy as OSCP and Hackthebox’s machines are designed. So you have a target to get root flag as well as user flag. If stuck on a point some help are…
Vulnhub - Bravery writeup.md Vulnhub Writeup - Bravery Description This machine hopes to inspire BRAVERY in you; this machine may surprise you from the outside. This is designed for OSCP practice, and the original version of the machine was used for a CTF. It is now revived, and made more nefarious than the original. If you MUST have hints for this machine (even though they will probably not help…
Vulnhub - Djinn Writeup.md Vulnhub: Djinn Description Level: Beginner-Intermediate flags: user.txt and root.txt Description: The machine is VirtualBox as well as VMWare compatible. The DHCP will assign an IP automatically. You’ll see the IP right on the login screen. You have to find and read two flags (user and root) which is present in user.txt and root.txt respectively. Format: Virtual Machine…
Vulnhub - SAR.md Vulnhub - SAR Description Sar is an OSCP-Like VM with the intent of gaining experience in the world of penetration testing. You can download the box from vulnhub here. Initial Scans nmap -sn 192.168.110.0/24 Server is up on IP 192.168.110.133 sudo autorecon 192.168.110.133 Open Ports Just a single port open PORT STATE SERVICE REASON VERSION 80/tcp open http syn-ack ttl 64 Apache…
Vulnhub - Symfonos 2 Vulnhub - Symfonos 2 Description OSCP-like Intermediate real life based machine designed to teach the importance of understanding a vulnerability. SHOULD work for both VMware and Virtualbox. You can download the box from vulnhub here. Initial Scans nmap -sn 192.168.110.0/24 Server is up on IP 192.168.110.131 sudo autorecon 192.168.110.131 Open Ports PORT STATE SERVICE REASON…
Vulnhub - Healthcare Writeup Vulnhub - Healthcare Description Level: Intermediate Description:This machine was developed to train the student to think according to the OSCP methodology. Pay attention to each step, because if you lose something you will not reach the goal: to become root in the system. It is boot2root, tested on VirtualBox (but works on VMWare) and has two flags: user.txt and…
vulnhub - Mr. Robot Vulnhub - Mr Robot Description Based on the show, Mr. Robot. This VM has three keys hidden in different locations. Your goal is to find all three. Each key is progressively difficult to find. The VM isn’t too difficult. There isn’t any advanced exploitation or reverse engineering. The level is considered beginner-intermediate. You can download the box from Vulnhub here. Initial…
Vulnhub - Symphonos.md Vulnhub - Symfonos: 1 Yet another vulnhub box writeup! You can download the VM from Vulnhub Description Beginner real life based machine designed to teach a interesting way of obtaining a low priv shell. SHOULD work for both VMware and Virtualbox. Name: symfonos: 1 Difficulty: Beginner Tested: VMware Workstation 15 Pro & VirtualBox 6.0 DHCP Enabled Note: You may need to…
vulnhub - Misdirection writeup.md Vulnhub - Misdirection Writeup Here’s another vulnhub box writeup You can download the VM from Vulnhub The purpose of this machine is to grant OSCP students further develop, strengthen, and practice their methodology for the exam. You may have issues with VMware. Initial Scans Scan the subnet nmap -sn 192.168.110.0/24 host is up at 192.168.110.154, run some basic…
Vulnhub - dc-9 writeup.md Vulnhub Writeup - DC: 9 You can find the box on Vulnhub here DC-9 is another purposely built vulnerable lab with the intent of gaining experience in the world of penetration testing. The ultimate goal of this challenge is to get root and to read the one and only flag. Linux skills and familiarity with the Linux command line are a must, as is some experience with basic…
Vulnhub - w34kn3ss writeup.md Vulnhub - w34kness: 1 Writeup You can find the box on Vulnhub here The matrix is controlling this machine, neo is trying to escape from it and take back the control on it , your goal is to help neo to gain access as a “root” to this machine , through this machine you will need to perform a hard enumration on the target and understand what is the main idea of it , and…
ATA Nutanix Move.md Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics Gateway not starting after Nutanix Move The Issue After moving one of our Domain Controllers from Hyper-V to Nutanix AHV using Nutanix Move, I was unable to start the Microsoft ATA Lightweight gateway service. Checking the log in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics\Gateway\Logs\Microsoft.Tri.Gateway-Errors.log showed the…
VLAN on Ubuntu Live Disc Configure VLAN tagging on Ubuntu Live DVD Most of the guides I found online show you how to configure a VLAN interface on ubuntu by running apt install vlan . That’s all good, however what happens if you’re booted to a Live DVD OS and you don’t already have network access to install a package. Well, it turns out you can use the ip command to add a VLAN tagged interface to…
VLAN on Hiren's Boot CD Configure VLAN tagging on Hiren’s Boot CD I had to configure a network card to use a VLAN on some Live CD operating systems to image a disk on a server. Luckily with HBCD it’s pretty much the same process as in normal Windows: Wait for all your devices to be detected and configured Click Start > Run Type ncpa.cpl and click OK Right click in some white space in the…
Packer for Nutanix AHV Packer for Nutanix AHV Packer automates the creation of virtual machine images. It’s quite a bit simpler than SCCM to set up if you just want basic, up to date images that you can deploy virtual machines from. Packer uses ‘builders’ to create virtual machine images for various hypervisors and cloud services. Unfortunately, there isn’t yet a builder for Nutanix AHV. AHV is…
Add disk to Nutanix CE.md Adding a new disk to Single Node Nutanix CE There wasn’t much detailed information for adding an additional disk to a Nutanix CE node, so I’ve compiled the steps and written a guide here. This guide is for a single node CE cluster and therefore I have to stop the cluster to perform most of these actions. If you have a multi node cluster, most of the steps can be done by…
UEFI to BIOS.md Convert UEFI VM to BIOS MBR (Windows, Nutanix AHV) What happens if you have a disk image configured for a UEFI machine, but you need to boot from BIOS? UEFI boot uses GPT disks, BIOS uses MBR. Microsoft’s guide to convert GPT to MBR requires the disk is empty, that doesn’t help if you need to boot the UEFI image on a BIOS machine… In my case, my Nutanix home lab isn’t able to boot…