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Bluesman's avatar
Bluesman
Icon for Bronze III rankBronze III
4 months ago

Your first lab level 9

What was the first level 9 lab you conquered? :).

It does not matter that you will seek advice from other giants, or that you will manage to complete it on your own: share your journey with us!; to get the token or become root on that server.

I start: I think that my first conquest of Lab level 9 is related to debugging ByteCode in Java (and only a few days ago!): my background is Oracle, and from years ago, so imagine how lost I was :).

After loading the project into the IDE (along with the required plugin) I started debugging bit by bit... until one particular string caught my attention; it stood out from the rest!.

And it was the solution :).

Good luck!

application security
defensive cyber
offensive cyber

8 Replies

  • Xat's avatar
    Xat
    Icon for Bronze III rankBronze III
    3 months ago

    I believe my first level 9 lab was 'Pen Test CTFs: Immersive Bakery', given that I just (this weekend) finished the last lab in Cyber Experts and earned my Cyber Experts Badge.
    These labs definitely require a lot of research outside of Immersive, reading through CVEs or other guides.

  • steven's avatar
    steven
    Icon for Silver II rankSilver II
    3 months ago

    puuuh... according to the report it was an mini CTF lab. I started IL in October 2022 so took me some months to do it. I remember I quite stuck on the LightNeuron and Cereal Killer. Took me months..no weeks to solve it :)

    Mini CTFs: MongoDB SQL Injection2023-03-20 11:57:02 UTC
    Pen Test CTFs: Immersive Bakery2023-04-20 15:58:41 UTC
    Pedro Ribeiro: Cereal Killer2023-04-24 14:17:13 UTC
    Linux Stack Overflow: Ep.6 – Demonstrate Your Skills2024-06-05 12:25:42 UTC
    Erik McClements: Linux Filesystem Race Conditions2024-10-22 23:17:07 UTC
    DFIR CTF: LightNeuron DLL2024-10-23 11:41:34 UTC
    Kevin Breen: Java Reverse Engineering2024-11-06 13:33:06 UTC
    Pedro Ribeiro: ASLR Bypass2024-11-07 12:13:28 UTC
    Pen Test CTFs: Jinja2 Exploitation2025-01-12 18:03:59 UTC
    Audio Steganography2025-01-28 13:43:06 UTC
    World Cup Special: Immersive Squad2025-03-14 10:02:12 UTC
  • barney's avatar
    barney
    Icon for Bronze II rankBronze II
    3 months ago

    Audio Steganography was the first one - although not sure it's still available for me, so the first that's still available would be the MongoDB SQLi

  • TillyCorless's avatar
    TillyCorless
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    4 months ago

    Nice question Bluesman 

    I have to echo Kieran's sentiment on my ability (I hope to be at level 9 some day!) but it's great to learn about your breakthrough to the most challenging labs! Would love to her from others, too.

  • KieranRowley's avatar
    KieranRowley
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    4 months ago

    I'm afraid that I am not qualified to commebt on this topic but I would love to hear everybody else's answers! 

  • Bluesman's avatar
    Bluesman
    Icon for Bronze III rankBronze III
    2 months ago

    TillyCorless​ & KieranRowley​:

    Good night!,

    I know I have not been able to complete all the level 9 labs in Immersive, but ... and I'm ‘afraid’ to ask :): have you considered labs level 10?: 'the best of the best', diabolical, convoluted, really complicated, without any hints or clues.

    Where certifications and experience count, of course, but those labs also require imagination, lateral thinking and getting out of comfort zones!.

    Imagine that we tried those labs, that we got the credentials, that we conquered the CTF ... to find out that those credentials don't work!, and that we have taken the wrong path: quite a humbling experience, isn't it? :).

    Laboratories with clues that lead nowhere or with honeypots that make you doubt the path taken and the notes written down; a series of labs that take months to complete and rethink lessons learned.

    I throw down the gauntlet: can Immersive make us sweat, but for real? ;).

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

      I'll happily tell the Cyber team to step up the difficulty in the next Season of the Community Challenge.

      I'll also try to get a list of labs that the most people struggle with, those must be our most difficult labs.