23. Trying Harder: The Labs

After successfully completing the course material, you can access a series of challenge labs through the control panel. These labs consist of interconnected machines and will require mastery of several techniques taught throughout this course in order to fully compromise them.

23.1. Real Life Simulations

Each challenge lab is designed as a self-contained black-box penetration testing network that requires enumeration, an initial compromise, and pivoting to other machines within the lab. The end goal is to compromise the entire challenge lab network.

Each machine in a given challenge lab contains a proof.txt file with an MD5 hash, which can be found either in the root folder on Linux machines or on the Administrator’s desktop on Windows machines. For machines that require privilege escalation, a local.txt file is also present in the appropriate low-privileged user’s folder.

Similar to the deployment design of the module VMs in this course, the challenge labs are not shared with other users. Please note that reverting may take some time given the number of machines and their interdependencies.

To aid in the research and development of custom attack vectors, a development machine (dev) is available for related tasks.

Take the time to work on these challenges, and remember that while different frameworks may simplify certain steps, there are many benefits to using custom code, as demonstrated throughout this course.

23.2. Wrapping Up

If you’ve taken the time to understand the course material in the course book and accompanying videos, and have completed all the exercises, you’ll enjoy the lab challenges.

If you’re having trouble, step back and adopt a new perspective. It’s easy to become fixated on a single problem and lose sight of the fact that a simpler solution may be waiting down a different path.

Take thorough notes and review them often, looking for alternate paths that might reveal the way forward. When all else fails, don’t hesitate to reach out to the student administrators.

For information related to the OSEP certification exam, please refer back to the introductory module or review our exam guide.

Finally, remember that you often have all the knowledge you need to tackle the problem in front of you. Don’t give up—and always embrace the “Try Harder” discipline!