Dante ProLabs (HackTheBox) Review

What is this Lab?

This whole lab is a simulation of a corporate network pentest with its level adjusted to junior pentester. It’s not an exam but taking into account HTB’s no disclosure policy it kind of acts like one but don’t worry you can still get help from the Official Discord Server.

I would not recommend this lab to an absolute beginner as you may not understand a lot of stuff, rather do the free machines and challenges on HackTheBox, and then when you can solve medium and hard-level ones you can try this.

You can take this lab if you’re planning on taking the OSCP/eCPPT or just for the sake of learning more stuff with a network pentest kind of feeling.

How to take the Lab

You can subscribe to this lab under ProLabs in HackTheBox. At the time of writing, It is listed as: £20.00 per month with a £70.00 initial setup fee. It is a bit on the expensive side for a lab but it was well worth it in my opinion because I learnt a lot of stuff from it.

My Experience

Before taking this lab I didn’t have much experience with priv esc of windows machines or knew much about Active Directory pentesting. I learned a lot about these and much more about other Linux vulns I didn’t know before

Hacktricks was very useful for me and helped me a lot in the whole Lab.

https://book.hacktricks.xyz/

I can’t be going into much detail about machines or the flow but enumeration will play a large role in compromising the network. Learning how subnets, Domain Controllers and Windows servers work will be advantageous. There might be more than one ways to compromise a machine so look for them too and try to take in as much knowledge an dexperience you can from this lab.

Tips

• Ask for help in the HTB Discord server if you get stuck they give you pushes without spoiling any of the content.
• Take as much time as you need and marinate yourself in all the new things you find, As it is neither an exam nor time-constrained.
• Spend more time reading and note-taking it’ll be very helpful not only to keep track but also to refer to similar topics later on.
• Take breaks while solving the network especially if you’re a beginner and a student who’s taking other classes. I took a 1–2 week break not only bcoz of my university classes but also to take a breather and think from a new perspective.

You can visit my personal blog for more reviews, writeups and research content to view in a more organized and formatted way here: Kaiser784 Blog