Overview
Participation in the Hackvens event organized by Advens, a leading cybersecurity company in France. This CTF (Capture The Flag) event allowed me to test my offensive security skills on cloud-native and IoT infrastructures.
Event Context
Hackvens is a cybersecurity event that brings together professionals and enthusiasts to solve realistic security challenges. The goal was to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in simulated environments representing real-world cases.
Tested Environments
Kubernetes Infrastructure
I worked on several scenarios involving misconfigured Kubernetes clusters:
- Privilege escalation via RBAC: Exploiting overly permissive permissions
- Secret extraction: Retrieving credentials stored in Kubernetes secrets
- Privileged pods: Using pods with elevated privileges to compromise the host node
- Service accounts: Exploiting service accounts with excessive permissions
IoT Devices
IoT challenges included:
- Firmware analysis to identify backdoors
- Exploitation of unsecured protocols (MQTT, HTTP)
- Interception and manipulation of device communications
- Access to unprotected admin interfaces
Techniques and Tools Used
Reconnaissance and Enumeration
# Network scan with nmap
nmap -sV -sC -p- target-ip
# Kubernetes enumeration
kubectl get pods --all-namespaces
kubectl auth can-i --list
Exploitation
- Metasploit Framework for automated exploitation
- Burp Suite for HTTP request analysis and manipulation
- kubectl for cluster interaction
- Docker for image and container analysis
Post-Exploitation
Network pivoting and persistence techniques to maintain access to compromised systems.
Applied Methodology
- Reconnaissance: Information gathering about the target
- Scanning: Service and vulnerability identification
- Exploitation: Exploiting identified flaws
- Post-Exploitation: Privilege escalation and pivoting
- Documentation: Writing detailed reports
Lessons Learned
About Kubernetes Security
- The importance of the principle of least privilege
- Dangers of unsecured default configurations
- The necessity of properly configured Network Policies
- The importance of securing secrets and using solutions like Vault
About IoT
- Many IoT devices lack basic security
- Unencrypted protocols are still widely used
- The importance of regular firmware updates
- The need to segment the IoT network
Reflections
This experience confirmed that security must be built-in from design (Security by Design) rather than added as an afterthought. It also reminded me of the importance of staying humble - even systems that seem secure can have hidden flaws.
Teamwork under pressure taught me to communicate technical discoveries effectively and to prioritize tasks based on their impact.