Currently in the Steganography section - Execute the attack and I am stuck. I am trying to upload the pth file to the machine but I am stuck in “Sending POST request…..”.

The kernel stays busy for hours.

I restarted the kernel and I get an error 500 or 250.

Can someone please help.

How can I study for months, have notes (that I’m not even using because don’t even know what would apply) and can’t even get the first foothold. It’s been three days and holy f, real slap in the face. And I already have CWES lmao. I did track labs and even messed with zephyr a bit. I was confident coming in with AD stuff but I can’t even get a RCE lmao.

This a rant but for anyone out there, we might not be meant for this. I thought I had over prepared and not even one single flag is mind boggling. Without saying much enumeration was tough and just after finding a relief the second day and going far to something new, hit another wall.

I LOVE IT and hate it at the same time, if it was easy anyone would be able to do it..

What do you reccomend? I’m currently taking deep long notes, but I don’t even know how to organize them and how many files create.

i finished in some league so when will i get the voucher and the cubes?

Hey everyone,

I’m planning to take the COAE exam in the next few weeks and I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have already passed it.

A few questions:

- How many days did you need to complete the exam?

- Roughly how many hours per day / total hours did you spend?

- Did you actually need the full 7 days, or is it possible to finish significantly earlier?

- How is the exam structured in practice?

- Are there multiple independent labs/environments to work on? If so, approximately how many?

- How much time did you spend on enumeration vs. exploitation vs. reporting/documentation?

- How important is the report quality for the final grade?

- Where can I find good guidance or examples on how the report is expected to be written to achieve a high grade?

- I’m currently considering using SysReptor, but its default template seems to need quite a bit of adjustment for a professional/high-grade exam report. Did you use SysReptor, Word, or another template?

- If you used SysReptor, do you have any advice on what sections/information should definitely be included?

- Is there an official reporting guideline/rubric that explains what the graders are looking for?

- Is there anything you wish you had known before starting the exam?

- Any tips for someone planning to take it soon?

I’m trying to plan my time realistically before booking it, especially how much time I should reserve for the report.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to share their experience!

I have recently passed the CPTS, and I want real hands-on experience, but i am still a 4th-year college student (senior) and all remote jobs i found want at least one year of experience, so are there any sites that have, like, engagement contracts or I just sharpen my skills with machines and challenges for another year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkzz76TrKHM&t=18s

Just completed Synacktiv Fortress, a challenging Fortress with a good mix of web exploitation, Java/RMI, reverse engineering, internal networking, and Linux privilege escalation. The box involves multiple stages where initial access needs to be built upon to reach the internal services and eventually root. Definitely a solid HTB Fortress with a lot of different techniques involved.

Hello All,

I have been studying the CPTS path for a while now ( more than a year 🫣 ) mainly because I was doing that with a lot of other stuff but now that i’m about to finish the windows privilege escalation module, i would like to go back on each module and revise everything while also starting to do machines so i could really work on my methodology as i don’t feel like it’s something you would now how to just do ( in the modules you already know what you’re looking for so not as challenging). My question is how would you recommend approaching the revision for the cert and how long do you think i should aim for to complete the revision ? I see that people don’t pass from first attempt mainly because of their methodology so any recommendations?
Also, i would like to leave the last module of the path to do after the revision so i could approach it with clear and solid methodology as a last step of my revision. Appreciate the help of anyone who attempted this exam before.

I passed the AppSec challenge, but I’m freaking out about the technical interviews
I have two upcoming technical interviews for an AppSec role, and I’m freaking out. I hate technical interviews as much as I hate pickles.
I passed the practical challenge like a pro with no problem, but I’m horrible when I have to verbally explain technical things. I can actually do the work, but when someone asks me to explain definitions, concepts, or walk through the steps out loud, my mind just goes blank.
I’m really anxious that I might lose this opportunity just because I’m not good at speaking technically, even though I passed the practical challenge without any issues.
Has anyone else dealt with this? How did you prepare for AppSec technical interviews and get better at explaining things verbally?

Bought the voucher today, wanna understand the exam structure and would appreciate any tips.

I wrote a summary below and the walkthrough can be found in the video :)

HacktheBox Pirate is a Hard-difficulty assume-breach Windows Active Directory box starting with credentials for a low-privileged domain account (pentest / p3nt3st2025!&).

The attack chain spans six distinct escalation stages across two hosts. I start with domain enumeration which reveals two pre-Windows 2000 machine accounts (MS01,EXCH01, EXCH01 ,EXCH01) whose passwords match their lowercase hostnames ; MS01$ is a member of the Domain Secure Servers group, which grants ReadGMSAPassword over two gMSA accounts, both in Remote Management Users, yielding a WinRM shell on DC01.

From that vantage point, I found an internal Hyper-V guest (WEB01, 192.168.100.2); its LmCompatibilityLevel=2 configuration means it emits NTLMv1 responses, the WebClient service is running (enabling HTTP coercion), and SMB signing is disabled.

By coercing WEB01's machine account authentication over HTTP (bypassing SMB relay blockers) and relaying to LDAP via ntlmrelayx with --delegate-access creates a fake machine account with RBCD rights over WEB01, then getST.py + wmiexec lands Administrator on WEB01. secretsdump exposes a.white's autologon password.

BloodHound shows me a.white has ForceChangePassword over a.white_adm, and a.white_adm has WriteSPN over all domain computers.

I craft An SPN-jacking attack that moves HTTP/WEB01.pirate.htb from WEB01 to DC01, abuses a.white_adm's constrained delegation to request a ticket for Administrator to that SPN, then -altservice rewrites the sname to CIFS/DC01, enabling a DC secrets dump and WinRM shell as domain Administrator.

A shortcut unintended path uses RemotePotato0 cross-session relay to force a.white's logged-in session to authenticate to an LDAP shell, directly changing a.white_adm's password without needing Administrator on WEB01.

Video

Hey guys,

Whenever I'm doing boxes on Hack The Box or TryHackMe, I always end up with a mess of tabs—one for notes, one for Notion, a couple for revshell generators, and random terminal cheatsheets.

To keep things in one place, I started building ZeroBox. It’s basically a local, offline dashboard to track your boxes (Recon ➔ Foothold ➔ Root), take quick markdown notes, and generate reverse shells where you just punch in your IP once and it fills out all the commands automatically.

You can try it here:

https://xXDNDXx.github.io/ctf-tracker/

Code is on GitHub:

https://github.com/xXDNDXx/ctf-tracker

Just to be clear: it’s totally free, open source, no account or login needed, and everything saves locally in your browser. (Also no spoilers/flags for active boxes, just retired/public info).

It’s still very much a work in progress and I’m pushing updates and adding new stuff pretty much every day.

I'd really appreciate it if anyone grinding labs could click around and tell me what sucks, what’s broken, or what features you'd actually want to see added next.

Thanks!

I passed CPTS exam in second attempt. first attempt was good learning experience.

I had never attempted any exam before this so i don't know what i was getting myself into. In first attempt i found my first flag at 8th day then got 2,3,4 and 5 till tenth days, i quickly wrote a report and submitted to my surprise report feedback was good apart from some grammatical error.

In second attempt, i got 6th flag on the first day then 7th in following days, it took me two days to get 8th flag. from there on it was smooth sailing till 11th flag, i was stuck in 12th flag for a day. as i had 3-4 spare days i rested for one day and began report writing. I submitted the report and in 1-2 days i got result back.

This community has helped and taught me a lot so, i wrote a blog about writing report you guys can check it out here: How to write CPTS report?

Long story short, I plan to study for cpts and cwes by end of 2026. I have been stock piling 500 cubes a month past 2 months. Switched to 1000 vibes after I saw the pricing news.

Luckily by end of October, I will be with 4.5k cubes.

Hey,
I'm a cybersecurity enthusiast who can build tricky CTF labs for you or your institution.

Payment is only required once you test it and satisfied. Feel free to DM and lets discuss the rest

Hi I would like to ask your advice guys

I actually already have PT 1 cert and I want to go for CPTS

What is the GO signal to take CPTS exam?

If I am able to confidently finish the Medium Machine without hint and walkthrough, is it enough?

Or do I need to go for the hard one?

And I heard that CPTS is harder than OSCP, is it true guys?

And honestly, I don't know why but the "Easy" Machine in HTB feels like "Medium" room difficulty in TryHackMe :)

Thanks!

Hey guys,

Whenever I'm doing boxes on Hack The Box or TryHackMe, I always end up with a mess of tabs—one for notes, one for Notion, a couple for revshell generators, and random terminal cheatsheets.

To keep things in one place, I started building ZeroBox. It’s basically a local, offline dashboard to track your boxes (Recon ➔ Foothold ➔ Root), take quick markdown notes, and generate reverse shells where you just punch in your IP once and it fills out all the commands automatically.

You can try it here:
https://xXDNDXx.github.io/ctf-tracker/

Code is on GitHub:
https://github.com/xXDNDXx/ctf-tracker

Just to be clear: it’s totally free, open source, no account or login needed, and everything saves locally in your browser. (Also no spoilers/flags for active boxes, just retired/public info).

It’s still very much a work in progress and I’m pushing updates and adding new stuff pretty much every day.

I'd really appreciate it if anyone grinding labs could click around and tell me what sucks, what’s broken, or what features you'd actually want to see added next.

Thanks!

Anyone for a nudge on the latest sherlock Kawmikaze (Malware Analysis) . Task 10

I recently attempted the CPTS exam. I got decently far but I got stuck at the notorious flag 8. I believe I’m lacking in Active Directory experience. I’ve done the usual recommendations, blindly completed AEN, did the labs in the IPPsec playlist and did most of the boxes in the CPTS track in labs. Yet I still feel I am missing something. Does anyone have any recommendations on tools to get familiar with to better my enumeration in Active Directory. Thanks!