Virtual Hacking Labs: ProLab Review

I recently wrote a review on the beginner / advanced and advanced + machines on Virtual Hacking Labs. That review can be found here: https://medium.com/@overgrowncarrot1/virtual-hacking-labs-advanced-and-advanced-certification-22ce4d7e9e54

I decided after going through those boxes and receiving the certification that I would want to do the ProLabs. To obtain the certification a student must complete 10 ProLab machines and also both Networks. From there, the student must submit a report, which I talked about in my other review above and on Friday’s the Virtual Hacking Labs team looks over reports and will send you a certification if you passed.

Starting off the interface is the same as the other regular labs:

As shown there are two networks, these were a lot of fun. I actually did these two last and did the stand-alone machines first. The ProLabs were much harder than than the advanced and advanced + machines. There were multiple websites and the student may have to compromise one site to get access to another site to hopefully finally get a reverse shell. There were a couple of labs that only took me around 15 minutes and I was root, however, most of them took around four hours or so. Enumeration is key within these different labs. One thing that I really liked is that a student must know how an exploit worked, as with the regular labs sometimes the exploit would fail and the student would have to understand what the exploit was doing and change information within it to be able to obtain an initial shell.

The ProLabs also comes with its own courseware shown below:

This courseware is 256 pages and the information inside of it is very relevant and up to date. You will not use everything you learn within the pages, however at some point you will, and it is great knowledge to know and really hits as shown on Active Directory.

I felt that the ProLabs really helped me understand where I was within penetration testing and helped me to know that I can overcome obstacles and find a way to be able to get into a machine. The Privilege Escalation for these labs was a lot of fun and did not use the regular GTFO bins things. I think only once did I see a cronjob, most of them were exploiting the machine against itself or understanding what services were on the machine.

I feel that the ProLabs are for Junior Penetration Testers looking to elevate themselves to the next level. If you have completed something like eCPPT the ProLabs are great to see that your pivoting skills are still there and allow you to try different things. If you go through the Networks how VHL wants you to, it does make it difficult and you will learn a lot along the way, just getting Domain Admin is not very difficult as long as you look at everything. Again, as I stated in the beginning enumeration is everything.

Also, thank you to the VHL team, as I stated in my last review they are very responsive and ready to fix any problems you may encounter throughout the course. I highly suggest this course, I know a lot of people do the VHL courseware for OSCP, however, I think it extends much further than that. It prepares you for a real life assessment.