HackTheBox Guardian Writeup
A walkthrough of the HackTheBox 'CoGuardiandeTwo' machine which is Hard rated linux box. This write-up covers initial access, privilege escalation, and post-exploitation techniques.
RECONNAISSANCE
NMAP
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┌──(dollarboysushil㉿kali)-[~/Documents/HTB_BOXES/guardian]
└─$ nmap -sC -sV 10.129.196.147
Starting Nmap 7.95 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2025-08-31 03:41 EDT
Nmap scan report for 10.129.196.147
Host is up (0.34s latency).
Not shown: 998 closed tcp ports (reset)
PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
22/tcp open ssh OpenSSH 8.9p1 Ubuntu 3ubuntu0.13 (Ubuntu Linux; protocol 2.0)
| ssh-hostkey:
| 256 9c:69:53:e1:38:3b:de:cd:42:0a:c8:6b:f8:95:b3:62 (ECDSA)
|_ 256 3c:aa:b9:be:17:2d:5e:99:cc:ff:e1:91:90:38:b7:39 (ED25519)
80/tcp open http Apache httpd 2.4.52
|_http-title: Did not follow redirect to http://guardian.htb/
|_http-server-header: Apache/2.4.52 (Ubuntu)
Service Info: Host: _default_; OS: Linux; CPE: cpe:/o:linux:linux_kernel
Service detection performed. Please report any incorrect results at https://nmap.org/submit/ .
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 17.84 seconds
⚠️ Notice:
This challenge is currently active on HackTheBox.
In accordance with HackTheBox's content policy, this writeup will be made publicly available only after the challenge is retired.
For hints or to chat with the community, join the Dollar T.V Discord server
or send DM on Twitter (X) dollarboysushil.
This challenge is currently active on HackTheBox.
In accordance with HackTheBox's content policy, this writeup will be made publicly available only after the challenge is retired.
For hints or to chat with the community, join the Dollar T.V Discord server
or send DM on Twitter (X) dollarboysushil.
This post is licensed under
CC BY 4.0
by the author.