I must admit, really hard but interesting machine for me, learnt numerous things with this one. SO REALISTIC !!!
Initial Foothold: Dont get fooled by the forbidden gates, take out directories, try getting all the subdomains, etc. Then go ahead and look sources to find something weird.
User: Make a note of what files were mentioned during your initial enum and which of them you were not able to access, or maybe shown some errors.
Root: Standard linux priv esc technique, 007 out running processes, detect the interesting ones and exploit…
Open to DM if anyone needs help 