Help on machines

Hello,
I am new to this and am trying to progress myself. From what I know, I have scanned different machines IP and it always comes back as every port being filtered. I need some help to get a foot in the right direction. What do you do when all ports are filtered? It seems like all of them, on any machine, are filtered.

Well thats kind of weird. Maybe You are not connected to openvpn, but if thats the case nmap will show host down instead of filtered (Unless your home network looks same as htb which is very unlikely).

@D4n1aLLL Can you explain that to me a little bit? I have my connection running under tor but no vpn. Do I need to be using openvpn? Even if I don’t use a vpn or put my connection under tor it will still show host is up but all ports filtered. I was trying to figure out the different methods of nmap to bypass firewall filters but none seem to work for me.

@Psychopath Yes you need to use openvpn otherwise you wont be able to access machines. Why are you using tor you dont need it. Also you dont need to bypass any firewall just connect to labs using openvpn config (download it from your dashboard → access) and you will be good to go.

@D4n1aLLL Okay, thank you for the help. Tor was just basic protection I was unaware that I needed openvpn to connect. I am curious of a couple things. In terms of real life, why is openvpn needed for HTB? When systems are being breached in real world scenarios, people arn’t “connecting to the network”. So i’m just curious why its needed to breach these machines.

@D4n1aLLL I am also curious how I was able to connect to the machines at all. You said it should say host down if I wasn’t connected on openvpn, but the host was up just all ports filtered?

Without stating the obvious here, using a VPN is a requirement. This allows you to enter the network and “see” all the target boxes, disallows communication between clients (other players) and probably most importantly, keeps you from having to stage attacks from across the internet. Some ISPs don’t like people port scanning and exploiting public facing machines so the VPN helps bypass this as well.

If you’re not comfortable with using a VPN or it’s outside your scope, check out http://root-me.org. No VPN is required for their service and since they leave everything facing the internet you’ll be attacking closer to a “real world scenario”.

And to answer your last question, you weren’t. You were scanning clients inside your LAN. No VPN = No HTB.

@dividebyzer0 Thank you for the feedback :slight_smile:

@dividebyzer0 How do you run exploits with a python extension if metasploit only accepts ruby?

@Pyschopath Pretty simple, don’t use Metasploit.