🔍 ExampleCorp Vulnerability Assessment Project

🛡️ Ethical Hacking & Penetration Testing Report

This repository contains the comprehensive vulnerability audit and exploitation walkthrough conducted on the ExampleCorp target environment, as part of a cybersecurity ethical hacking assessment. The audit involved scanning, exploiting known vulnerabilities (CVE-2017-12635 & CVE-2017-12636), analyzing phishing campaign results, and compromising a web application using OSINT.

📁 Project Structure

📂 ExampleCorp-Audit/ ├── 📊 Reports/ │ ├── Final_Penetration_Report.pdf │ └── CVSS_Score_Analysis.xlsx ├── 📸 Screenshots/ │ ├── Nessus/ │ ├── Nmap/ │ ├── Exploits/ │ └── OSINT/ ├── 💻 Exploits/ │ ├── CVE-2017-12635_exploit.json │ └── CVE-2017-12636_payload.py ├── 📦 Phishing_Credentials/ │ └── Compromised_Accounts.csv ├── 🔒 backdoor.php └── README.md

🧪 Technologies Used

• Nessus – Vulnerability scanning
• Nmap – Port and service discovery
• Metasploit – CVE exploitation
• SQLite – Phishing results parsing
• Curl – CouchDB verification
• Linux (Kali) – Attack OS

🚨 CVE Exploits

• CVE-2017-12635
  Improper validation of JSON fields in Apache CouchDB allowed the creation of unauthenticated admin accounts.

• CVE-2017-12636
  Command injection in CouchDB allowed remote code execution as the CouchDB user.

📌 Key Findings

• Ubuntu 16.04 system past end-of-life with critical Apache/CouchDB vulnerabilities
• Apache server exposed sensitive internal structure via /server-status
• At least 10 credentials successfully harvested from phishing database
• OSINT revealed whitelisted paths and firewall exceptions, aiding exploitation
• Full administrative access was obtained through CVE chaining

🧠 Lessons Learned

This audit reinforces the critical importance of:

• Regular patching & CVE monitoring
• Network segmentation and internal IP masking
• Properly configured WAF and access controls
• Monitoring for phishing and credential reuse

✅ Requirements Met

• ✅ Nessus & Nmap scans
• ✅ CVSS v3.0 scores with Temporal & Environmental vectors
• ✅ Exploit walkthroughs for CVE-2017-12635 and CVE-2017-12636
• ✅ OSINT-based compromise and web app abuse
• ✅ ≥10 Phishing credentials extracted from database

📎 References

• NVD CVE-2017-12635
• NVD CVE-2017-12636
• Apache CouchDB Exploit
• CVSS Calculator v3.0

👤 Author

Jamilu Ibrahim Richifa
Cybersecurity Enthusiast | Ethical Hacker | Open-Source Contributor
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