Dancing

Platform : HackTheBox (Starting Point — Tier 0) Difficulty : Easy Date : 07/04/2026

Tags : #htb #starting-point #smb #misconfiguration #anonymous-access


Brief

“Dancing is a very easy Windows machine which introduces the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, its enumeration and its exploitation when misconfigured to allow access without a password.”

Recon

nmap -sV [TARGET]

SMB open on ports 139/445.

Enumeration

List shares with smbclient :

smbclient -L \\\\[TARGET]\\

WorkShares looks juicy — and accessible without a password.

Exploitation

Connect to the share anonymously :

smbclient \\\\[TARGET]\\WorkShares

Browse subdirectories, get flag.txt, exit, cat flag.txt locally.


Notes

  • SMB without auth on a corp Windows box = critical misconfig (data leakage, ransomware pivot)
  • Always enforce SMB signing + strong auth, disable SMBv1, restrict share permissions
  • This kind of misconfig is exactly what initial-access brokers love