Share your experiences and stories about how you popped boxes and shells >First time hacking >read a few intro to pentesting books >Easy.jpg >download a vm that says easy difficulty >get on kali start scanning easy machine >nmap, metasploit aux, smtp user enum for about 30 minutes >get emails from contact page >alright lets try bruteforcing some users >spends 45 minutes trying to crack user passes >struggle.jpg >why can't I get this >check common passwords >"Try their username" >bruteforces again >mfw it takes me 4.5 hours get access to something that should have been a 5 second guess
>>231 I have a stupid beginner story as well >start doing overthewire.com wargames >blaze through the first few levels of bandit since the first few things are standard file stuff >reach the level that requires you to deal with hidden files >ezpz, ls -a, cd .hidden >cd: hidden: No such file or directory >try to escape the . character, nope >spend 20 minutes searching how to cd into a hidden directory, get nothing >take a closer look at output of ls -a >the color of the "folder" is slightly different from the . and .. folders >it was a file, not a folder