Forum Thread: Help Hacking a HP Mediasmart EX470

Hey guys, first time posting, thanks in advance for any help. I'm just getting into Cyber Security and hacking so I don't know a whole lot although I am fairly decent with computers. My mom forgot the password to her server and I've been trying to access the files on it for her. It's a HP Mediasmart EX470 server running Windows Server 2003 sp2 32-bit. For those of you not family with it, there is no screen on the server and as far as I can tell the only way to view the GUI is to type in the password in the connection software on your pc.

I looked into documentation on resting the password and you can do a server recovery but it requires a cd that my mom lost. Microsoft and HP no longer offer support so I can't get an ISO from them and I can't find one anywhere else.

I also tried to boot into the server and use hotkeys to open CMD and using "net user Administrator password". I tried a couple times and I think I did all of the inputs correctly but that didn't work either

I tried pulling out the HDD and connecting it to my windows pc via a Sata to USB cord. The drive showed up and I can access the files in the shared folders but the specific user files tell me I don't have the proper permissions every time I try to access them

I booted the server with Kali Live and connected using a ssh portal. The goal was to use chntpw but I couldn't access any of the windows files on the drive. I scanned what partitions were available using fdisk -l and poked around them but non of them had any Windows file structures, it was all showing as Linux.

I tried using Metasploit over my network and used these guides to try different exploits:

https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/hack-like-pro-remotely-add-new-user-account-windows-server-2003-box-0138898/

https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/hack-like-pro-save-world-from-nuclear-annihilation-0146216/

https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/hack-like-pro-take-control-windows-server-2003-remotely-by-launching-reverse-shell-0139041/

https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/hack-like-pro-take-control-windows-server-2003-remotely-by-launching-reverse-shell-0139041/

I tried each several times but every time Metasploit tells me the exploit was created but no session was started.

There may have been a couple other things I tried but I can think of them right now. My mom usually has pretty decent passwords so I don't think a brute force attack will work. I also thought about using something like Ophcrack but since there isn't a GUI I can't see what I'm doing. I was thinking maybe there was a version that would auto-run off of a USB and store the results but I couldn't find anything like that. Does anyone have any ideas on something I can try?