recon_07 (vhost over TLS)

View the exercise here: PentesterLab: Recon 07

OBJECTIVE

For this challenge, your goal is to access the default virtual host ("vhost") over TLS.

DEFAULT VHOST OVER TLS

When accessing a new webserver, it often pays off to replace the hostname with the IP address or to provide a random Host header in the request. To do this, you can either modify the request in a web proxy or use:

curl -H "Host: ...."

This time you need to check the TLS version of the website to get the key

SOLUTION

This command performs a DNS lookup to retrieve the IP address associated with the domain hackycorp.com.

dig hackycorp.com

curl https://51.X.X.X/

• curl is used to send HTTP requests to the given IP address. In this case, you're trying to access the site using its IP directly over TLS (https://). However, because the IP address does not match the hostname in the SSL certificate, this step is likely to fail with an SSL error.

curl https://51.X.X.X/ --insecure

• This ignores SSL certificate verification and forces the connection.

• --insecure allows curl to bypass SSL certificate validation. This is necessary because the certificate is tied to the domain name (hackycorp.com), not the IP address.

• The request should succeed, but you won't get the default virtual host because it still assumes you're accessing via the IP address rather than the expected hostname.

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curl https://51.X.X.X --insecure -v

• -v flag enables verbose mode, showing you detailed information about the request, including SSL/TLS handshake details, headers, and response.

curl https://51.X.X.X --insecure -v -H 'Host: test'

• some targets may allow us to access another version of the website, so it is important to check the behavior of an application when using a hostname that is not the one the application is expecting