How to become better? My Views!

Greetings!
After being on HTB from few weeks and after some great people guidance me all the way from scratch, I myself started from very bottom to assure that I didn’t knew anything either when i started to further justify this

https://forum.hackthebox.eu/discussion/14/devel-cant-start-a-session#latest

but over time with right efforts and lots of advice from better than me people i realized to improve you just need to make efforts and please drop the mindset of “Points/Leaderboard” they are not real however what you learn and take back is real and can be applied in real life, so “TRY HARDER” everyone is lost once in a while and it’s not wrong to take hints but there’s ad difference in trying hard and asking for hints and expecting people to give out answers just because you don’t want to “Google”, to those who are looking for resources plenty of them on google, if you can’t develop a method of enumerating the boxes correctly VulnHub is amazing place to start maybe read writeups on like 5 boxes and then come back and attempt your very first box on HTB, meanwhile the HTB team is surely trying to introduce some starter labs to get new people comfortable, I am sure it’s coming sooner or later but till then please “Try Harder” ask hints not answers because you can get help on boxes on this website but real life isn’t really going to work that way! so it’s best to just let go of the greed of points and work on the boxes to learn!
Secondly, I myself want to contribute to learning of new people in the community so I am doing writeups so you can know how to tackle basic applications like "WP Blogs,Command Line Injects, how to get reverse shells,how to use dirb and with time we will progress to Rev Engineering,BoFs and all the elite topics
Lastly Ippsec’s youtube channel is simply AMAZING to learn stuff I just can’t put in words how much i learn every time i saw a new video from that guy and if you still feel stuck always feel free to talk about stuff in Shoutbox surely someone will help you but it’s preferred you ask topics not boxes so you can take home some lesson!

I am further attaching the links I really find useful as a starter.

Get more boxes :-https://www.vulnhub.com/
Ippsec’s Channel :- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa6eh7gCkpPo5XXUDfygQQA
Abatchy’s blog :- http://www.abatchy.com/
My Blog :- http://openexploit.blogspot.in/2017/10/

Sorry for a long post I really hope it’s helpful and we can drop the habit of asking “Boxes” and if you are really stuck with some box or topic ask for it in Shoutbox or if you want you can PM people willing to help I am no hacker god but even you can PM me i will try my level best to help you out!

This is the best post I have seen on here for Newbie Advice. I’m in the exact same position and have wanted “answers” when I feel completely stuck. I agree it is annoying when the answer is " Try Harder" but take a break, grab a coffee or something and then actually try harder!! The answer is there and most of the time you just need a nudge and then google. It’s all there, you just have to find it.

I have learnt so much from this site and from everyone who has helped me along my journey so far by giving me hints/nudges. The hours and hours spent googling and reading up on topics/exploits (for me anyway) means I understand it all better than if I had have just been handed the answer!

Best of luck Buddy.
I still remember that day when you asked me about HTB how to get in HTB and i gave you a little hint.After that you constantly asked me about how and where to start i told you many things and after that i myself unable to do anything because of some personal problem and after some months i got my laptop on 26 july and from august i started my preparation on vulnhub and then decided to do HTB and yes i really learned a lot from HTB boxes

Thanks to both Vulnhub and HTB

Exactly! this is all about “Try Harder” nobody is gonna hand out information,you ask for a start and go inside it it’s like finding the flow, and i was able to figure out the login my profile reads about 160 days back haha

yeah I agree

Just want to add that the wargames at overthewire.org and the ‘tutorial boxes’ at penterlabs.com (some are also on vulnhub) are good for learning specific things (bash, crypto, xss, crsf, etc.). There is also an oscp specific channel (#oscp) and hack the box channel (#hackthebox) on irc.2600.net. I owe most of my limited knowledge to people who took me under their wing there.

Great post for beginners.

Great post like everytime! Was really nice to meet you! Good luck

Great post, gives good advice to those getting started here on HTB and for those that want to take this lab environment for bettering, there skill set for work and things like that. Thanks for the share also.

Although this is quite old, it is still a really good point.

I completely agree, I am new to HTB with intentions of becoming certified in the field, one thing as a n00b I avoid is asking for hints, if I am stuck, after Googling or think I have enumerated enough (you can never enumerate enough :smile: ), I will check the forums.

I will never ask questions in the forums or PM users for guidance, as to me that defeats the purpose and feels like cheating (using the forums feels like cheating depending on the box.)

I also avoid Metasploit, mainly because your use of Metasploit is limited in the OSCP and deeper understanding is important to me.

But if I do get stuck and hit that brick wall, I take a few days break and come back to it :smile:

It’s admirable you don’t ask questions, but I don’t think it should be frowned upon - I think it’s how you ask the question and what you get from it. If you say how do I get root.txt and you don’t show your workings, that’s a bit different to showing you’ve tried everything you could find, can you point me on a new path or am I missing something?

Google is great as are the resources above but sometimes a kick in the right direction is helpful to then make better use of google and you can’t sometimes find what you don’t know, that’s what I take these environments as… learning (and good value learning too).

When I am ready, I’ll sign up for OSCP and go into full hermit mode with no collaboration - until then I’m here to find what I can to help me improve, if that means someone telling me about something new that I’d never heard of… that’s great, I’m learning even more and if someone asks for help in the right way, I’ll help them too (where I can).

it’s very helpful for us newbies, thank you

Great resources, Thanks! Everybody’s posts are very helpful around here. I here to learn before taking the OSCP in the new year.
I think I have a similar mentality as @CLAR, I try not to ask questions. I know that I have a lot to learn and I’m sure the people who are taking the time to help don’t enjoy “hand-holding” with every beginner question that they get. I only want a hint in the right direction. If i’m going to research something for the next 2 hours, I want to make sure I’m on the right track first! I think this community is great at building that balance!

I am new as well a total noob. Usually I ask for hint but some people take some time to reply (I understand that one) then luckily I was able to solve it myself “a blessing in disguise” maybe? From now on, will try this one. Rather asking for hint I’ll just go read the forum only when I don’t know what to do anymore or if Google can’t help me. I’m preparing myself as well for OSCP. What do you guys think about virtualhackinglab? I’m planning to take that one.

P.S. why my sig like this ha xD

thanks

:+1:

One thing I have learned through this and the OSCP is that you often don’t know when you are tired and need a break. Do it anyway and when you come back often your brain will magically show you an answer you never would have seen if you had just tried to power through.

[“you” = “me” :slight_smile: ]

This is a great post. I agree with the philopsophy, I wonder though, those that have more experience, it would be helpful if us n00bs had links. IE , “linux basics, windows basics, pentest, etc” , whether they are Youtube links or articles or even purchasing books. I think the help and or idea of learning is closer to attaining when we have something applicable. Does that make sense?

@opnsysme said:
This is a great post. I agree with the philopsophy, I wonder though, those that have more experience, it would be helpful if us n00bs had links. IE , “linux basics, windows basics, pentest, etc” , whether they are Youtube links or articles or even purchasing books. I think the help and or idea of learning is closer to attaining when we have something applicable. Does that make sense?

Did you read the part about using Google? ?