Windows machines, how to deal with them?

Hello everyone, as title says time came for me to deal with windows. As i proceed further, i cannot avoid to notice how windows is predominant and the main focus: labs are full windows, leaks/ post mortem from previous breaches basically mention almost only windows systems therefore yeah, here we comes.
I am particularly interested in the following:

  • Is hacking on a windows machine mandatory if target is windows?i know ippsec uses kali regardless but i think it’s not an argument as there’s always that guy doing crazy programming tasks with excel
  • After some brainstorming i decided to buy a VIP and go through retired machines, which ones are the must own for getting familiar with windows?
  • is cmd worth learning at all? or go full powershell?

Also, general tips if you ever have been in this situation!
Thanks in advance for the time

  1. doesn’t matter, there might be times when you will need to use Windows, but it can be done through linux as well, look at the Bastion machine for example
  2. For start, I’d go with Blue/Devel/Granny/Legacy/Bastion, pick a machine yourself, you can filter the boxes to the easy difficulty
  3. go both?

It’s not mandatory, but it makes things easier. When using linux you’re spending as much time fighting the toolset as on the machine.

ikr? for the little i made, i can def relate on this!

When using linux you’re spending as much time fighting the toolset as on the machine.
Also, regarding this
For start, I’d go with Blue/Devel/Granny/Legacy/Bastion, pick a machine yourself, you can filter the boxes to the easy difficulty
i may have been unclear. I didn’t meant the easiest boxes, but the ones with more important learning wise and real word scenarios

@notforsale said:
ikr? for the little i made, i can def relate on this!

When using linux you’re spending as much time fighting the toolset as on the machine.

Like realizing that smbclient by default will not use anything but smbv1, even though it supports v2 and v3, when you could just have done net use \\bananaboat\c$? :slight_smile: Or tearing your hair out when you have popped SYSTEM but still are unable to enter the folder you want to be in, as it happens to be a hard-link and you’re browsing remotely over SMB? :smiley:

War stories, a few of the ones I tell our trainees when they ask why I don’t use linux as my primary platform… I’m still using linux quite a bit for things it does better, but that is not privilege escalation in an MS environment. As soon as I feel I have the time to move all my stuff over I will probably switch my full-system VMs to WSL2, because having access to both worlds in one package == win!