Just failed my first attempt with root only on BoF.
I spent one hour in BoF, and stuck on remaining four machines. Found several pieces of exploit but still not allowing me to get shell.
Even the 10 points one, not many port were there, and it had one easy search BoF exploit. I tried with the manual one, it did not work. Modified the payload, still not work. May be I should try to install the same application and try with the BoF. Anyway, I thought that should work with the auto way. However, I was wrong.
And I was able to get into a file system in another machine. Find the user proof, but with out any visible plan to lead me to the low priv shell.
Similar issue occurred on remaining two machines, with the exploit that I found, I got some information about the system(even some passwords, but it couldn’t help).
I spent one day after my fail in exam to review what mistake that I may make during the exam preparation. I think I always relay on hints while getting low priv shell. May be just a word or a riddle, that could help me to focus on specific thing to get shell. But in the exam, I cannot even have a byte of hints.
Seems like I should improve my enumeration skill first.