This session begins with an introduction of popular red-teaming/penetration testing tools, the basic steps of penetration testing are also covered to prepare the participants for the next phase of this session. 

Having introduced a general methodology to penetration testing and the tools to apply it, the participants will be introduced to the Battlegrounds module of the Hack the Box platform which will host a CTF event. In this CTF a series of virtual machines will be introduced by the Focal Point’s Red Team to the attendees of the CyberHOT event, then the attendees will be given time to work on each challenge and finally a short solution will be presented to conclude each section.

The CyberHOT Summer school sessions aims for the participants:

• To be able to implement enumeration on web services.

• To be able to research existing vulnerabilities of known components.

• To be able to exploit existing vulnerabilities utilising metasploit and other public exploits.

• To be able to implement privilege elevation on compromised targets.

Red Team’s Experience:

• Penetration Testers / Ethical hackers with over 15 years experience

• Leading Red/Blue Teams in International Organisations

• Many years of experience in NATO Cyber Defence and in Best Practices, Tactics & Techniques

Target Audience

Ethical hackers, penetration testers, IT security professionals

9:00 - 9:10 Welcome by the Organisers

9:10 - 10:00 Keynote Speaker Tejas Patel (DARPA Program Manager) - Cyber Agents for Security Testing and Learning Environments (CASTLE)

Cyber Agents for Security Testing and Learning Environments (CASTLE) aims to address these challenges by developing a toolkit that instantiates realistic network environments and trains artificial intelligence agents to support in the defense against advanced persistent cyber threats. Researchers will explore the use of reinforcement learning to automate network hardening and ultimately accelerate cybersecurity assessments with approaches that are automated, repeatable, and measurable.

10:00 - 10:15 Coffee Break

10:15 - 11:15 Introduction to HtB (Hack the Box) platform - Penetration Testing Walkthroughs 1/2: 

The purpose of this session is to get participants familiar with HtB’s platform and attacker VM instance. In this session a full walkthrough of two easy challenges will be offered by the lecturers. Attendees are expected to follow up step by step and submit the flags derived from the challenges to the platform. 

Challenges:

Challenge 1 Highlights:

• Basic Windows knowledge

• Port and Service Enumeration

• Exploit Modification

• Metasploit 

Challenge 2 Highlights:

• Linux

• Web Shells

• Searching For Public Exploits

11:15 - 11:25 Coffee Break

11:25 – 12:45 Penetration Testing Walkthroughs 2/2:

The purpose of this session is to get the participants engaged with more penetration testing challenges by offering step by step walkthroughs. In this session a full walkthrough of two further easy challenges will be offered by the lecturers. Attendees are expected to follow up step by step and submit the flags derived from the challenges to the platform.

Challenges:

Challenge 3 Highlights: 

• Port Scanning and Enumeration

• Searching For public exploits 

Challenge 4 Highlights:

• Linux

• Port Scanning and Enumeration

• Web Fuzzing

• Locating Recently Modified Files

12:45 – 13:45 Lunch Break

13-45 – 17:00 Capture the Flag, Penetration Testing Exercise

The purpose of this session is to engage the participants with more penetration testing challenges, initially without a walkthrough, so they can troubleshoot it themselves. In this session a short introduction will be offered to each challenge, participants will be given 20-30 minutes to work on each challenge and have a high level solution presented to them afterwards for 10-15 minutes before they move on to the next challenge. Attendees are expected to engage on these challenges based on the methodology followed throughout the morning sessions.

Challenges:

Challenge 5 Highlights:

• Python

• Linux

• XXE Injection

• Source Code Review 

Challenge 6 Highlights: 

• Enumeration

• Exploit Development

• ROP

• Cracking keepass databases

Challenge 7 Highlights:

• Enumeration

• SQL Injection

• Java Classes

• Debugging with JDWP

• Speech to Text 

Challenge 8 Highlights:

• Enumeration

• Reversing

• Git

• Web Hooks

• Git Hooks

• Dynamic Binary Analysis

End of CyberHOT Summer School - Certifications (17:00)

The HtB Lab will be available to the attendees for a week after the CyberHOT event, to give them time to complete challenges from the second session.