Forest Hackthebox Walkthrough Best May 2026

This is an interesting request because “Forest” is a retired machine on Hack The Box (HTB), and combining it with the word “best” usually refers to walkthroughs that highlight a particularly clever or efficient enumeration or exploitation path.

Here’s the most interesting feature about the best Forest walkthroughs (especially the ones rated highly by the community on forums, GitHub, or YouTube):

Box Information

• Box Name: Forest
• Difficulty: Medium
• Operating System: Linux
• IP Address: 10.10.10.74 (at the time of writing)

4) Local enumeration & escalation

• With valid user credentials (e.g., svc_backup):
  • Use smbclient to access shares, winrm or RDP if allowed.
  • Use impacket's wmiexec.py, smbexec.py, or psexec.py to run commands remotely:
    • wmiexec.py forest\svc_backup:Pass@
  • Dump processes and check for sensitive service credentials or LSASS memory access.
• If you have local admin on a host, dump LSA secrets / cached creds:
  • Use mimikatz (privilege escalation -> SeDebugPrivilege) or built-in tools to extract credentials from memory.
  • Example commands (on a Windows host with appropriate privileges):
    • mimikatz # privilege::debug
    • mimikatz # sekurlsa::logonpasswords

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The Enumeration Phase (The "Hook")

The machine starts with a deceptively quiet footprint. A standard Nmap scan reveals the usual Windows suspects: SMB (445), LDAP (389/636), and RPC (135). forest hackthebox walkthrough best

What makes the enumeration phase of Forest stand out is the reliance on Null Session Enumeration. In the "best" walkthroughs, this is the critical pivot point. Without a web server to scan, users are forced to interact with the Domain Controller directly.

• RPC Client: The key to the first step is utilizing rpcclient or enum4linux to enumerate user accounts without credentials. This teaches a vital lesson: misconfigured RPC interfaces can leak valuable data.
• The User List: Harvesting the list of domain users is the prerequisite for the next stage, transforming this from a simple scanning exercise into a targeted attack.

Step 3: Abusing Account Operators

Account Operators can modify most non-protected users/groups and can also reset passwords of users who are not protected by AdminSDHolder. This is an interesting request because “Forest” is

One critical target: sebastien — a user who is allowed to delegate.

Better yet: Create a new user, add them to a privileged group? No — Account Operators cannot modify Domain Admins directly, but they can write the owner of a group. Box Name: Forest Difficulty: Medium Operating System: Linux

The known attack: WriteOwner privilege on the Exchange Windows Permissions group.

From BloodHound, we see that svc-alfresco has WriteOwner on Exchange Windows Permissions.