Uncovering Path Traversal Vulnerabilities Through Host Monitoring

السلام عليكم و رحمة الله، اللهم انصر اخواننا في غزه 🇵🇸

Salam o alikum, pray for people’s in gaza 🇵🇸

I recently wrote a simple Bash script that turned out to be a game-changer in one of my hunts, and I wanted to share how it helped me uncover a path traversel.

The script’s purpose is straightforward: it monitors hosts by pinging them every hour. If a host comes online, it sends a notification to my Telegram using the notify tool by ProjectDiscovery. After notifying me once, it stops pinging that host for 24 hours to avoid unnecessary alerts. This setup saved me a lot of time and hassle.

Here’s the scenario: I was investigating a host, but it was offline when I first checked. So, I added it to my script, set it to monitor, and waited. Not long after, I received a notification that the host was back online. When I checked, I discovered it was running Jira by Atlassian. After some digging, I found that the Jira instance had a path traversal vulnerability — a high issue that could have gone unnoticed if I hadn’t been alerted in time. Alhamdulillah, I managed to report the vulnerability before anyone else could.

This small script made a huge difference in that moment, and I think others might find it useful too. Whether you’re a bug bounty hunter, penetration tester, or just someone who needs to keep an eye on important infrastructure, this tool could come in handy.

You can check out the code on PingPong. I’d love to hear your thoughts or suggestions for improvements!