Meow

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

Tags : #htb #starting-point #telnet #misconfiguration

Recon

nmap -sV [TARGET]

Port 23 open — telnet. Nothing else.

Exploitation

telnet [TARGET]

Tried common defaults :

admin → denied
root (no password) → in

ls, flag.txt is right there.

cat flag.txt

Notes

Telnet = cleartext protocol, should never be exposed
Empty root password = textbook misconfig
One badly configured service is enough to own a box