Forest is one of the most famous and well-crafted Active Directory (AD) machines on HackTheBox. Rated as Easy, it beautifully simulates a real-world misconfiguration: Kerberos pre-authentication brute-forcing and privilege escalation via Account Operators.
If you are searching for the best Forest HackTheBox walkthrough, you have come to the right place. We will cover enumeration, AS-REP roasting, cracking hashes, WinRM access, and finally abusing WriteOwner privileges to compromise the domain.
Machine Info:
AS-REP Roasting works when a user has "Do not require Kerberos pre-authentication" enabled.
We are logged in as a service account, but we need Administrator access to read the root flag or fully compromise the domain. forest hackthebox walkthrough best
| Port | Service | State | Observation |
|------|---------|-------|--------------|
| 53 | DNS | Open | Domain: htb.local |
| 88 | Kerberos | Open | Key Distribution Center |
| 135 | MSRPC | Open | |
| 139/445 | SMB | Open | NetBIOS |
| 389 | LDAP | Open | Anonymous bind allowed? |
| 5985 | WinRM | Open | Potential for remote execution |
| 9389 | .NET Remoting | Open | |
Critical Discovery: Port 5985 is open, meaning we can use Evil-WinRM later—no need for RDP. IP: 10
Forest is a beginner-to-intermediate Windows box focused on Active Directory enumeration, credential theft (LSASS), Kerberos/AS-REP/Pass-the-Hash style abuse, and lateral movement to a domain controller. This walkthrough shows a structured, high-level progression from initial foothold to domain compromise with commands and key findings. Do not run any of these steps against systems you do not own or have explicit permission to test.
