Face Your Fears this Halloween and Return to Haunted Hollow
š§āāļø Brace yourselves, brave souls! The haunted season has returned, and with it, an all-new cybersecurity adventureāHalloween 2024: Return to Haunted Hollow. The sinister spirits of cyberspace await you in this terrifying sequel to our 2023 Halloween collection, The Haunted Hollow. This is no mere challengeāitās an eerie expedition through 9 haunted labs designed to test your skills and sanity alike. Whether you're a seasoned crypt keeper of the cybersecurity world or a curious newcomer, there's a fright waiting for everyone in this immersive capture-the-flag experience! š® From unraveling encrypted secrets to hunting ghosts in packet captures, every lab holds the key to defeating the horrors lurking within. Can you escape the Haunted Helpdesk, break the Encryption Enigma, or uncover the Spooky, Scary, Silly Snaps? Each step you take deeper into this digital graveyard will challenge your mind and test your courage, until you can break out of the park through the Emergency Exit! š·ļø With a difficulty ranging from approachable to spine-chillingly tough, itās not about conquering all the horrorsājust enough to emerge from the shadows with your sanity intact. Gather your wits, grab your digital lantern, and get ready to explore the most terrifying corners of cyber horror! š§ Release Date: October 16th ā Estimated Time to Complete: 5 hours š» Labs: 9, each more terrifying than the last š Difficulty Range: 2-6 š§ Collection Type: Challenge Lab details Note: These labs can be completed in any order, but we have ordered them from most accessible to most challenging. The final lab can only be completed after the other labs have been completed. The prequel collection doesnāt need to be completed before you can dive into these labs, but if you're craving some extra chills and thrills, feel free to haunt them first! Phishing for Treats Difficulty: 2 Skills required: None ā this lab should be accessible to all audiences What's involved: This lab is a new phishing emails lab, with Halloween-themed emails. Users have to identify whether the email is 'safe' or 'spam' based on indicators from the emails. PCAP Pandemonium Difficulty: 4 Skills required: Packet capture analysis (Wireshark) What's involved: In this lab, users will need to analyse multiple packet captures using Wireshark to identify answers to the questions from the network traffic. Delving Deeper Difficulty: 4 Skills required: Web application enumeration What's involved: Users will need to explore a web application in order to gain access to a computer terminal within the application. From there, they'll need to interact with a simple API. Encryption Enigma Difficulty: 5 Skills required: Modern encryption/encoding techniques (Knowledge of how to use CyberChef will be useful) What's involved: Users will need to identify the correct encoding and encryption technique used to obfuscate each message in an application, before decrypting/decoding each message. Confusing Code Difficulty: 5 Skills required: Linux enumeration techniques, reverse engineering (particularly using Ghidra) What's involved: Users will need to use Linux enumeration techniques to identify a binary, before reverse engineering that binary to figure out how to exploit it. Haunted Helpdesk Difficulty: 5 Skills required: Linux enumeration and privilege escalation techniques What's involved: Users will be dropped into a restricted environment. From there, they'll need to figure out how to escape, and escalate their privileges to root. Fearsome Forensics Difficulty: 6 Skills required: OSINT, web application enumeration, modern encryption techniques, steganography What's involved: In this lab, the user will need to explore the web application and discover clues using OSINT techniques. These clues will then be used to decipher encrypted messages, finally revealing how to extract a message hidden inside an image. Spooky, Scary, Silly Snaps Difficulty: 6 Skills required: AWS capabilities (particularly S3 and AWS permissions), Python scripting What's involved: Users will need to enumerate public S3 resources to identify credentials for an AWS account. From here, they'll need to interact with the AWS console, and identify a way of escalating their privileges on AWS. Emergency Exit Difficulty: 1 Skills required: None ā this lab is a culmination of the preceding labs within the collection, but no specific skills are required to complete this lab. What's involved: In each of the labs in this collection, users would have been asked to make a note of a code. In this lab, they need to submit each of these codes. Share Your Thoughts Did you escape the Haunted Hollow? We'd love to hear from you! Remember you can post in our Help & Support Forum for hints, tips & collaboration from your fellow community of experts.New CTI/OT Lab: Norwegian Dam Compromise: Campaign Analysis
We have received reports of a cyber incident that occurred at the Lake Risevatnet Dam, near Svelgen, Norway, in April 2025. A threat actor gained unauthorized access to a web-accessible Human-Machine Interface (HMI) and fully opened a water valve at the facility. This resulted in an excess discharge of 497 liters per second above the mandated minimum water flow. Which persisted for four hours before detection. This attack highlights a dangerous reality: critical OT systems are increasingly exposed to the internet, making them accessible to threat actors. In this case, control over a damās valve system was obtained via an insecure web interface, a scenario that could have had even more severe consequences. A recent report by Censys identified over 400 exposed web-based interfaces across U.S. water utilities alone. This dam incident in Norway exemplifies the tangible risks posed by such exposures. In this lab, you will be taken through the attack from an offensive viewpoint, including cracking an HMI and fully opening two valves. Why should our customers care? OT environments, including dams, energy grids, and oil pipelines, are foundational to national security and daily life. These systems cannot be secured using traditional IT playbooks. As OT becomes more connected, tailored security strategies are critical to prevent unauthorized access and catastrophic failures. Who is it for? Incident responders SOC analyst Threat Hunters Red Teamer Penetration Testers OT Engineers Here is the link to the lab: https://immersivelabs.online/v2/labs/norwegian-dam-compromise-campaign-analysisNew Team Sim Content: (Defensive) Operation Vulpes
Operation Vulpes is a defensive scenario and marks a return of using Splunk as the SIEM solution. This scenario sees Orchid Corporation reeling from the aftermath of a ransomware attack. Defenders will need to determine the attacker's path to compromise and infect the network and use information provided by a law enforcement agency to attempt to recover files. Users will need to use a variety of tools and defensive disciplines to solve the scenario ā not just the SIEM solution. This sim also utilizes our new user noise generation framework to simulate user web browsing activity on end-user devices. This spawns the Edge browser as a domain user and visits internal and external websites to add additional noise to logs collected by Splunk. Why have we created this content? This Team Sim adds a level of complexity and realism by introducing actual ransomware. So you and your teams can exercise and prepare for the worst-case scenario. (Please be aware that Immersive Labs created the ransomware for exercise purposes only and includes failsafes to control its execution.) In addition, the sim uses popular tools within security stacks, so the simulation is true to life. What are we publishing? A new Team Sim exercise, Operation Vulpes, which will be viewable in the Team Sim catalog for all Team Sim customers. Who is this content for? This Team Sim is primarily focused on testing the defensive and technical capabilities of the following roles: SOC analysts Incident responders Threat hunters Check it out now!New CTI Lab: Xworm: Analysis
Xworm is a piece of malware that was first discovered in 2022 being used by threat actors like NullBulge and TA558. Xworm is a remote access trojan (RAT). Attackers deploy it onto compromised machines to steal data, facilitate remote code execution through shell access, and tamper with native security solutions like Microsoft Windows Defender, ready for other malware to be dropped and executed on a machine. Why have we created this content? Xworm is a commodity piece of malware that has been observed in the wild and has previously been observed being sold on hacker forums to opportunistic cybercriminals. Recently, cracked versions of this malware have been leaked to VirusTotal, GitHub, and other repositories. This content provides a unique look into commodity malware, how it's designed, and what to look out for when coming across it. What are we publishing? All customers on a CyberPro License have immediate access to a new lab. Xworm: Analysis Who is this content for? This lab is focused on upskilling and increasing the defensive capabilities of the following roles: Incident Responders Malware Analysts Reverse Engineers SOC Analysts Cyber Threat Intelligence Analysts We are also hosting a webinar! Come and see what we do as a CTI team and how we help cyber teams with their real-world threat preparedness!New CTI Lab: CVE-2025-0411 (7-ZIP MoTW bypass) ā Defensive
The Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) team at Trend Micro identified the exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability in the 7-ZIP application dubbed CVE-2025-0411, which was used in a SmokeLoader malware campaign targeting eastern European entities. 7zip is used all over the world by individuals and organizations, so it's essential users understand this campaign. CVE-2025-0411 (7-ZIP MoTW bypass) ā Defensive CVE-2025-0411 is a Mark-of-the-Web (MoTW) bypass vulnerability that exists within 7 ZIP installations with a version older than 24.09. This vulnerability allows attackers to bypass the MoTW protection mechanism employed by the Windows operating system, designed to warn users after downloading potentially malicious software. Bypassing MoTW for attackers increases the chances of successful phishing attempts, which is one of the largest ways attackers get into organizations. Due to MoTW being bypassed, users are not warned of potential malicious intent if they were to execute files. Because of this, attackers spend a lot of time trying to find different MoTW vulnerabilities and are often patched in Microsoft's patch Tuesdays due to their prevalence. Why should you care? Bypassing security controls is ideal for attackers. If their downloaded files do not get warned against by Windows, then the chances of successful attack chain execution is much higher! Therefore, we created a lab to identify what this attack process looks like for defensive teams and how to identify each stage. The lab teaches you what to look out for when this vulnerability is exploited and how campaigns have used it in the real world. Who is it for? Incident responders SOC analyst Malware reverse engineers CTI Analysts Threat Hunters Here is the link to the 7zip lab: https://immersivelabs.com/labs/cve-2025-0411-7-zip-motw-bypass-defensive Related Labs, designed to give you similar skills: https://immersivelabs.online/series/elasticsearch-threat-hunting-apt29/labs https://immersivelabs.online/series/introduction-to-elastic/labsNew CTI Labs: Threat Actors: Salt Typhoon ā SNAPPYBEE Campaign Analysis & Threat Actors: Salt Typhoon
Salt Typhoon has been a threat actor that has caused a lot of worry for defensive teams all over the world. They are a threat actor group which has been predominately targeting Telecommunication companies. They have been in the media a lot over the past few months for their hacks on telecommunication companies in the US.Immersive were finally able to get access to some of the malware samples, as more get released we shall cover more of the campaigns. Threat Actors: Salt Typhoon This lab takes the user through who Salt Typhoon are, what their techniques, tactics, and procedures are, and who they target. Discussing their previous campaigns in depth and why they are so feared as a group. Salt Typhoon: SNAPPYBEE Campaign Analysis Many of our customers want to learn how salt typhoons operate. This lab shows people how to start hunting for them inside a network, taking our users through the different stages, techniques, and tactics they use and how to identify them for detection. Why should our customers care? Salt Typhoon are a big threat to telecommunication companies around the world. Their main focus is to be in a network and perform cyber espionage without being detected. They largely operate inside networks without being detected for a long time, sometimes even months to a year. Our customers need to proactively understand what this threat is and how to start monitoring for them in their network. Who is it for? Incident responders SOC analyst CTI Analysts Threat Hunters Here is the link to the threat actor lab: https://immersivelabs.online/labs/threat-actors-salt-typhoon Here is the link to the campaign analysis lab: https://immersivelabs.online/v2/labs/salt-typhoon-campaign-analysisNew CTI Labs: Cobalt Strike Host Forensics and SIEM Analysis
Cobalt Strike is an adversary simulation tool developed by Fortra. Cobalt Strike was designed to be used by professional red teams to perform post-exploitation actions such as enumerating file systems, elevating privileges, and deploying malware. Despite being designed for red teams, threat actors often use both licensed and unlicensed (cracked) versions of Cobalt Strike for malicious intentions. Why have we created this content? A recent report again stated that Cobalt Strike is the C2 framework of choice by hackers around the world. We previously had no labs covering how to identify and defend against this C2 framework. Therefore, as we have with Havoc and Sliver, we have released labs based on analysis of its activities in networks and on a host and created and released volatility plugins to help defensive teams in their own analysis. What are we publishing? All customers on a CyberPro License have immediate access to two new labs. Threat Research: Cobalt Strike C2 ā Host Forensics Threat Research: Cobalt Strike C2 ā SIEM Analysis Who is this content for? These labs are focused on upskilling and increasing the defensive capabilities of the following roles: SOC Analysts Incident Responders Threat Hunters Malware AnalystsNew CTI Lab: CVE-2025-35433 (Erlang SSH): Offensive
On April 16, 2025, a critical vulnerability, identified as CVE-2025-32433, was disclosed in the Erlang/OTP SSH server. This critical vulnerability allows unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected systems by sending specially crafted SSH messages before authentication. After these messages have been sent, attackers have code execution on the victim machine. This lab will walk you through the mechanics of this vulnerability, helping you understand its implications and learn how an attacker could exploit it. Why is this lab important? Given Erlang's widespread use in telecommunications, IoT, and distributed systems, this vulnerability poses a significant risk to victims in multiple sectors and industries. Customers using Erlang should assess its vulnerability status and patch as soon as practicable. Who is this lab for? This lab is an offensive CTI lab, so it primarily benefits penetration testers and red teamers. That said, it's still incredibly valuable for defensive personas as well, so they can see how the attack could work. These personas include: SOC Analysts Incident Responders Threat Hunters Here is the link to the lab: https://iml.immersivelabs.online/v2/labs/cve-2025-35433-erlang-ssh-offensive
