Nginx reverse proxy & AJP

HTB Content Academy
1

Can anybody help please. I’m trying to set up the nginx.conf file with:

upstream tomcats {
server <TARGET_SERVER>:8009;
keepalive 10;
}
server {
listen 80;
location / {
ajp_keep_conn on;
ajp_pass tomcats;
}
}

I comment out the entire server block and append the above in the
http block. I then add the IP address and port of my target, replacing
<TARGET_SERVER>:8009, but I just can’t get it to work.

Please can someone give me a little guidance on this.

Many Thanks
kippa

Apologies, please ignore, I missed commenting out a curly brace.

2

listen 80; is supposed to be changed. Look at the note below it:

Note: If you are using Pwnbox, then port 80 will be in use already, so, in the above configuration change port 80 to 8080. Finally, in the next step, use port 8080 with cURL.

3

Many thanks onthesauce, that solved my next question. I got the port
80 error after sorting out a missed brace that I should have commented out to solve my previous issue.

Ta
kippa

4

No worries! Sounds like a pre-coffee mistake haha!

5

You’re not far off, coffee gone cold error :slight_smile:

6

Im getting 504 Gateway Time-out

any help with this?

thanks

7

Are you using the pwnbox?

8

Yes, i just dowload the parrot HTB OS to try, but i changed the port to 8080 and then curl localhost:8080

9

Just to clarify, you are using their hosted pwnbox right? Not a VM on your own network? For some reason it doesn’t work as well via the VPN.

Post the upstream and server configuration you are using!

10

Correct, i tried witha VM and it does not work,

#user nobody;
worker_processes 1;

#error_log logs/error.log;
#error_log logs/error.log notice;
#error_log logs/error.log info;

#pid logs/nginx.pid;

events {
worker_connections 1024;
}

http {
include mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;

#log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
#                  '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
#                  '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

#access_log  logs/access.log  main;

sendfile        on;
#tcp_nopush     on;

#keepalive_timeout  0;
keepalive_timeout  65;

#gzip  on;

#server {
#    listen       80;
#    server_name  localhost;

    #charset koi8-r;

    #access_log  logs/host.access.log  main;

    #location / {
        #root   html;
        #index  index.html index.htm;
    #}

    #error_page  404              /404.html;

    # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
    #
    #error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    #location = /50x.html {
        #root   html;
    #}

    # proxy the PHP scripts to Apache listening on 127.0.0.1:80
    #
    #location ~ \.php$ {
    #    proxy_pass   http://127.0.0.1;
    #}

    # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
    #
    #location ~ \.php$ {
    #    root           html;
    #    fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
    #    fastcgi_index  index.php;
    #    fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /scripts$fastcgi_script_name;
    #    include        fastcgi_params;
    #}

    # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
    # concurs with nginx's one
    #
    #location ~ /\.ht {
    #    deny  all;
    #}
#}


# another virtual host using mix of IP-, name-, and port-based configuration
#
#server {
#    listen       8000;
#    listen       somename:8080;
#    server_name  somename  alias  another.alias;

#    location / {
#        root   html;
#        index  index.html index.htm;
#    }
#}


# HTTPS server
#
#server {
#    listen       443 ssl;
#    server_name  localhost;

#    ssl_certificate      cert.pem;
#    ssl_certificate_key  cert.key;

#    ssl_session_cache    shared:SSL:1m;
#    ssl_session_timeout  5m;

#    ssl_ciphers  HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;
#    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers  on;

#    location / {
#        root   html;
#        index  index.html index.htm;
#    }
#}

upstream tomcats {
server 161.35.173.232:8009;
keepalive 10;
}
server {
listen 8080;
location / {
ajp_keep_conn on;
ajp_pass tomcats;
}
}
}

11

Don’t use a VM, try it again on HTB’s hosted pwnbox.

This all looks good. Just try it on a pwnbox and you should see some results.

12

I did and all i get is the same error

13

What url are you curling to get the results?

14

curl http://127.0.0.1:8080

15

Any errors when you launch nginx?

16

no, nothing is shown

17

@ajauregui0 Whoops, I musta missed it. You didn’t put the target servers port in there! 8009 needs to be replaced with the port from the target server.

18

ill do it again

19

no, i keep geting the same error

20

Could somebody drop a hint on this? I´m getting the same 504 error

Thanks in advance!