There are two well-known cybersecurity resources I quickly found out about early on in my journey: Try Hack Me (THM) and Hack The Box (HTB). Oddly enough, I haven't started any challenges on either platform, although I have accounts on each one. But that's something I'd like to change in the very near future.
HTB recently released their new offering: Hack The Box Academy. This rekindled my interest because it was catered to those new to security. And if you're new and have been doing your research on these two resources, you probably already know that between THM and HTB, HTB was known as the non-beginner friendly resource of the two.
So I signed up for an account on HTB Academy and was pleasantly surprised by the look and feel of the website. I was also impressed by the offerings they had, which were all things I've read and watched about, but didn't know how to do myself.
But what really caught my eye was this:
The challenges are categorized as Offensive, Defensive, and General -- which I LOVE! I've found some cool defensive challenge/CTF/gamified options, but I'm stoked to see HTB highlighting it in this way. I ended up creating an account right away.
So what does any of this have to do with the Infamous Hack The Box Invite? Well, HTB Academy and regular HTB do not have a single sign-on; each platform have separate credentials. I saw a link to join the Discord server, so I join only to find out that I have to submit my identification code from HTB into the HTB Discord Server before I'm allowed into the chatrooms.
The problem is the identification code that Discord is asking for is NOT on HTB Academy Settings! So I figured that the code they need is from the regular HTB. I didn't have an account on regular HTB, but since I needed that identification code, I went to open an account only to be presented with the Invite Challenge.
I'm up for a challenge, and I was actually looking forward to it. HTB box has rules that need to be adhered to if you want to participate on their platform, and one of those is not to spoil the challenges, including the Invite Challenge. So if you're reading this, and you haven't created an account yet, I suggest not going the easy route which is finding blog posts of users who have freely posted the solution to get the invite code. It defeats the purpose.
Now to sound like a total and complete hypocrite: I thought the challenge was fun, and like all things on my journey to become a security professional, I wanted to document my process for any future employers that may come across my website. So if that describes you, then click the link below for my write-up.
But, if you're interested in participating in Hack The Box and you haven't completed the Invite Challenge yet, then let this be a fair warning. I'm not going to make it painfully obvious to find the solution (that's what Google is for if you really don't care to solve it on your own).
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