So someone on my feed mentioned the TryHackMe Advent of Cyber 2 event that’s coming up, and I figured, f it, I’ve been all in on the last few events, what’s one more, right? So I looked into it…
I kinda like the idea. It’s a new challenge every day from 12/1 to xmas. Billed as “beginner-friendly” challenges, which is fine, because any practice is good practice, keep your skills fresh and all that.
I especially like TryHackMe’s platform. If you haven’t explored it yet, it works like this. When there’s a machine to attack for a challenge, they offer it as a deployable machine, on their network. The way you attack them can be either through a VPN (they will give you a personalized .ovpn file that you can drop onto your Kali box or whatever your chosen attack platform is) –OR– they will give you a fully-configured attack platform in the browser. Best of both worlds. If you’re just getting your feet wet and don’t have an attack platform set up yet, they’ve got you covered. And if you’ve got a fully-refined set of tools you’d prefer to use (and continue to refine and beef up while you’re at it), they’ve got you covered there too.
I signed up nine days ago, and I’ve already leveled up to level 5 and earned 10 badges. None of this was part of the Advent of Cyber event, this was just part of their regular offerings. I’m comfortable with the platform and ready to hit the ground running.
The other thing I like about this event is that the prizes, of which there are quite a few, are not awarded in order of performance. Instead, you get a raffle ticket for every task you complete. That means n00b hacker just getting his or her feet wet stands a reasonable chance of winning something, and it’s not all going to be locked in by the best of the best.
Hope to see some of you on the leaderboard. It starts Tuesday. Get signed in now at https://tryhackme.com and get comfortable now so you can plow through. I expect the time commitments will be light, even if you try to hit every challenge.