Forest HackTheBox Walkthrough: The Best Step-by-Step AD Enumeration Guide

Introduction

If you are diving into the world of HackTheBox (HTB) to sharpen your penetration testing skills, Forest is an unavoidable milestone. As an "Easy" difficulty Windows machine, Forest is deceptively simple. It doesn't require complex buffer overflows or obscure exploits. Instead, it demands what real-world hacking requires most: meticulous enumeration.

Forest is a textbook example of attacking Active Directory (AD). It teaches you how to leverage BloodHound, abuse AS-REP Roasting, and escalate privileges using SeBackupPrivilege. Many walkthroughs exist, but this guide focuses on the best, most efficient, and exam-relevant methodology.

In this article, we will cover:

1. Reconnaissance (Nmap scans)
2. Enumeration (SMB, LDAP, Kerberos)
3. Initial Foothold (AS-REP Roasting)
4. Privilege Escalation (BloodHound & SeBackupPrivilege)
5. Cleanup & Lessons Learned

Verify with Evil-WinRM

WinRM is open (port 5985). Connect:

evil-winrm -i 10.10.10.161 -u svc-alfresco -p s3rvice

We are in. Grab the user.txt flag from C:\Users\svc-alfresco\Desktop.

Foothold achieved without a single brute-force password guess.

Executive Summary

Forest is widely regarded as a rite of passage for aspiring penetration testers. It serves as a quintessential "Easy" Windows box that perfectly bridges the gap between basic enumeration and legitimate Active Directory (AD) exploitation. Unlike many entry-level boxes that rely on obscure web vulnerabilities, Forest drops the user into a raw Windows Domain environment, forcing them to master enumeration protocols like RPC and LDAP before pivoting to the infamous DCSync attack. It is, without a doubt, one of the best learning experiences on the platform for understanding Windows privilege escalation.

4) Local enumeration & escalation

• With valid user credentials (e.g., svc_backup):
  • Use smbclient to access shares, winrm or RDP if allowed.
  • Use impacket's wmiexec.py, smbexec.py, or psexec.py to run commands remotely:
    • wmiexec.py forest\svc_backup:Pass@
  • Dump processes and check for sensitive service credentials or LSASS memory access.
• If you have local admin on a host, dump LSA secrets / cached creds:
  • Use mimikatz (privilege escalation -> SeDebugPrivilege) or built-in tools to extract credentials from memory.
  • Example commands (on a Windows host with appropriate privileges):
    • mimikatz # privilege::debug
    • mimikatz # sekurlsa::logonpasswords

Box Information

• Box Name: Forest
• Difficulty: Medium
• Operating System: Linux
• IP Address: 10.10.10.74 (at the time of writing)