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Introducing The Human Connection Challenge: Season 1

KieranRowley's avatar
KieranRowley
Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
2 months ago

Show off your skills and compete to become the very first Human Connection Challenge Champion!

Starting today (4th Nov 2024) we will begin releasing a series of all-new Challenge Labs. Each month you’ll be given the chance to showcase your cybersecurity skills across a range of topics and climb the Season 1 Leaderboard, with the chance to win kudos and rewards along the way. There are 7 labs in Season 1, providing you with seven months to  polish your skills, build your cyber resilience and demonstrate your expertise!

How does it work?

We'll announce an entirely new lab at the beginning of each month from November through to May, right here within The Human Connection community. After the lab is released, you will have a 3 week window to complete it.  Once the time is up, we will crunch the numbers and reveal the top performing community members in the following categories:

🥇 First to Finish
⏱️ Fastest to Complete
🎯 Most Accurate
💪 Most Persistent

In addition, at the end of each month, the lab author will provide a walkthrough to guide you through the lab and share hints, tips and expert advice on how to approach similar labs in the future.

What topics will the labs cover?

Season 1 will cover a range of topics from OS and Web Exploitation to Linux and Scanning. To keep it challenging, we won’t be sharing too many details in advance 🤫

How can I take part?

To attempt the labs, you will need an Immersive Labs CyberPro or Application Security licence, whether that is provided by your employer, or through our free Cyber Million platform. If you  don’t currently have a licence, you can find instructions on how to register for Cyber Million here.

To compete in the Human Connection Challenge you will also need a community account with the same email address that you use for your Immersive Labs access. If you  don’t currently have a community account, you can find instructions on how to register here.

What’s in it for me?

Aside from the legendary status and bragging rights over your community peers for proving your cyber capability, we’ll reward each participant with an exclusive digital badge. Monthly winners will be awarded physical challenge coins with swag and prizes available for the overall season winners (details coming soon 👀).

How will you decide on the winners?

🥇 First to Finish

The community member who completes the lab first after it is released will be crowned First to Finish for the month.

⏱️ Fastest to Complete

The 'Fastest to Complete' will be the community member who accomplishes the lab in the least amount of time within the three-week challenge period. Please note, only your first attempt will be considered in this category.

🎯 Most Accurate

The most accurate is the community member who achieves the highest level of accuracy in the shortest time during the three-week challenge period. Please note, only your first attempt will be considered in this category.

💪 Most Persistent

The most persistent is the community member who embodies resilience, patiently exploring various methods and strategies until they successfully solve the lab.

🎁 Spot Prizes

From time to time we may also award spot prizes for any community members who help their peers complete the challenge over in the Help and Support forum.

In the event of a tie in any of the categories, we will recognize all tied participants for their accomplishments - after all, demonstrating your skills at this level is an achievement in its own right!

What are you waiting for?

The first lab of The Human Connection Challenge: Season 1 is available now! You have until midnight on Sunday 24th November 2024 to complete it!  

To find it in the Immersive Labs Platform, Click Exercise > Challenges & Scenarios > The Human Connection Challenge: Season 1

Don’t forget to Follow The Community Blog to get a notification whenever a new Challenge Lab is released!

Good Luck!

Updated 2 months ago
Version 1.0
  • Good fun - I've completed it now.

    I'm looking forward to the next one......Gus 

     

     

    • Congrats GusC !!! And thanks for sharing the feedback below! Will keep you posted when the next one launches! 😀🚀

    • udhav's avatar
      udhav
      Icon for Bronze II rankBronze II

      hey, congrats on completing the challenge, i am stuck on the admininstrator password. any tips or hints will work.
      thanks!!

  • 2 little gotchas - I've probably ruined my accuracy on the "windows version" q - you are best using WMIC to extract the string without any superfluous information and 2) when trying to run RDP inside Linux - don't forget that the shell you have open is a SSH into a remote system. Open a new shell for the xfreerdp :) 

     

  • hey,
    i have been enjoying the season 1, but the windows registery part is haunting me since yesterday, i have been stuck on the administrator password from windows registery. any follow up on that please.

    • GusC's avatar
      GusC
      Icon for Bronze III rankBronze III

      Hello - did you notice the extra admin account under C:\users? 

      I just searched on that in the registry and kept tapping F3 until something interesting came up. 

      • udhav's avatar
        udhav
        Icon for Bronze II rankBronze II

        were you lookig for C:\Users\administrator2 string in the registery?
        or what type of interesting thing were you looking for?

         

  • hi managers,
    i want to ask something from you guys. Can I make a Medium blog on the walkthrough of the human connection challenge season 1? I will not mention any tokens or flags in my walkthrough.
    thanks! 

    • KieranRowley's avatar
      KieranRowley
      Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager

      Hi udhav, welcome to the Human Connection!

      Would you be open to posting the blog post here in the community, rather than on Medium? We'd love to host it for you once the first lab period is concluded in 2 weeks time.

       

       

      • udhav's avatar
        udhav
        Icon for Bronze II rankBronze II

        this sounds great, Sir. I would love to do that. Thanks! 

  • Fantastic machine. I completed and enjoyed a lot.

    Most rememberable moments: you are not part of remote management group. Another one, runas admin but you are not really admin to add user.

    Kudos to the developer who created such brilliant scenarios. Thanks

     

  • I am so close to the end but am stuck on question 25!

    I have the password but the user isn't a member of the Remote Access Users group and I can't find a way around this to get logged onto the Admin account.

    • jagira's avatar
      jagira
      Icon for Bronze I rankBronze I

      Hi DaveBrine,

      You are inside the machine with low privilege user. How will you escalate your privilege if i give you admin username and password?

      • DaveBrine's avatar
        DaveBrine
        Icon for Bronze I rankBronze I

        I just figured it out, thanks.

        Just need to do the new user tasks and the lab will be complete!

  • I have also just added my name onto the list of users that completed Season 1.
    Great challenge indeed and I am looking forward to the next lab.
    Learnt a lot from enumeration to privilege escalation.
    Running various commands on different OS's (Linux & Windows)
    The name said Basic OS Skills, difficulty 6...
    ...I wonder whats next to come