Tier 0 is foundational. Every machine in this series exposes a misconfigured or unauthenticated service — Telnet, FTP, SMB, Redis, RDP, Nginx, MongoDB, Rsync. The point is not the exploit, it’s learning to read the service before you touch it. These writeups document what each machine taught me, not just how I got the flag.
// Writeups
HTB: Meow
Enumeration with Nmap, connecting via Telnet, and why unauthenticated remote access is still depressingly common.
HTB: Fawn
FTP protocols, anonymous authentication, and how a misconfigured file server hands over everything in plaintext.
HTB: Dancing
SMB enumeration, share access with a blank password, and why Port 445 still keeps security teams up at night.
HTB: Redeemer
Redis, in-memory databases, and why a caching service exposed to the internet without authentication is a gift to an attacker.
HTB: Explosion
RDP misconfigurations, xfreerdp, and getting a full desktop from a blank administrator password.
HTB: Preignition
Directory brute-forcing with gobuster, finding an unlisted admin panel, and default credentials that were never changed.
HTB: Mongod
MongoDB, NoSQL databases, and what happens when a document store is connected to the internet with default settings.
HTB: Synced
Rsync, anonymous module access, and syncing files off a server that never asked for credentials.