TryHackMe Byte Lotus — Exposed Git Repository

Byte Lotus was a relatively simple TryHackMe challenge, but I liked it because the vulnerability wasn’t really buried in complicated application logic. The problem was the way the application had been deployed.

Enumeration revealed an exposed .git directory on the web server. From there, the challenge became an exercise in recovering the Git repository, reconstructing the application’s source files, and examining them for functionality that wasn’t obvious from the website itself.

What I found particularly useful was seeing how much information can remain inside Git even when the files aren’t sitting directly in the web root. The repository metadata and object database can be enough to reconstruct source code, inspect previous revisions, and potentially uncover routes, secrets, configuration information, or other material that was never intended to be public.

This one reinforced a very simple lesson: never deploy a .git directory inside a publicly accessible web root.

I’ve moved the complete step-by-step walkthrough, commands, and notes to my GitHub TryHackMe repository:

Read the complete Byte Lotus walkthrough on GitHub

The walkthrough covers the original enumeration, confirming the exposed repository, downloading the Git metadata, restoring the missing source files, inspecting the application, and a small problem I ran into when wget introduced files that Git attempted to interpret as branch references.