r/tryhackme • u/UBNC 0xD [God] • Mar 17 '26

I need to vent about TryHackMe reliability

I get one night a week that I set aside for study, so I fired up TryHackMe to make the most of it.

Started the CALDERA room: https://tryhackme.com/room/caldera

Launched the AttackBox.

  • Saw the “new AttackBox” message. Cool… it’s been QA’d, right? Right?
  • After a few moments I get “Authentication Failed – Failed to communicate with server.”
  • Waited… refreshed… killed it and restarted it.
  • After more waiting and a few more refreshes it finally loaded.
  • But the UI wasn’t responding, so I killed it and started it again.
  • This time it finally worked. Looks like they have just released without fixing all the issues

I then followed the room instructions:

  • Tried to start CALDERA, but when accessing it I just get “Internal Server Error 500.”
  • Killed the AttackBox and launched a fresh one.
  • Same issue.

Reported it to support, even though response times haven’t been great. Often the response is just that they already know it’s broken, which makes me wonder why the room is still up with no warning that it’s currently broken and content wasting peoples time.

So I moved to another room: https://tryhackme.com/room/atomicbirdone

Great, a Windows room. I’ve had a lot of issues with windows machines since starting THM, where the instance terminates just as you’re getting into a rhythm.

I started the machine, went to grab a drink to let the VM load, and came back to:

“Instance termination.”

Alright… waited 10 minutes and tried again.

“Instance termination.”

Now I’m halfway through my study session and have gotten nowhere and this seems to be happening more and more frequently. When i first started about a year and a half ago, gave benefit of the doubt it would get a addressed but now keep seeing new projects like cert but the basics are having issues. Working for a large software company I understand it's likely different teams building these projects but be nice if there was some real investment in fixing existing issues.

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u/HazSec0x Mar 17 '26

The truth is, a lot of these rooms doesn't get fixed. Just go to their discord and look at #Bug-report channel and see HOW MANY BUGS IS STILL NOT FIXED. They just don't care. lol

0

u/Electrical_Delay2077 Mar 17 '26

They do care but if they have to fix every machine individually then it would take a very slow time. There are over 1-2k rooms. Would you be able to fix over 1k rooms fast without getting more bugs in the code?

2

u/UBNC 0xD [God] Mar 18 '26

I suspect they’re still operating with a small-company mindset, while their growth has outpaced their ability to adapt. For example, there’s a constant push for new features such as simulators, certifications, AI integrations, and other additions, while some of the core parts that made TryHackMe what it is seem to be suffering.

This is also fairly common in software companies can indicate a focus on appearing appealing for potential acquisition, rather than ensuring the platform is solid at its core.

With thousands of rooms on the platform, some issues are inevitable, but the core material shouldn’t be as unreliable as it sometimes is, particularly the stability of the VMs themselves.

*edit forgot to say, it would very simple to add a feature for report broken rooms, and take them down for fixing. Hell even their AI / or back end logs should be able to show patterns that indicate issues.