How does HTB work?

Off-topic
1

Hi Guys,

Sorry if these questions are obvious, however, I just came from TryHackMe and became familiar with the way the platform worked there.

It seems Hack The Box works quite differently, could the following questions be answered?

  1. Are Machine Instances public? - While working on the Blunder Box I noticed that posts were being added and a PHP reverse shell was uploaded. In TryHackMe instances are private and I can deploy the machine and terminate the machine as I please.

  2. How do Machine resets work? I subscribed and noticed that I get Unlimited machine resets? What does this actually mean? Am I resetting the machine for other users?

  3. When I try to stop the Machine (Like i would on TryHackMe) It responds with the message You do not own this machine assignment, what does this mean?

  4. I clicked Transfer Ownership - What does this actually mean?

Any anwsers to my questions are greatly appreciated.

2

@Dexterplays said:

Hi Guys,

Sorry if these questions are obvious, however, I just came from TryHackMe and became familiar with the way the platform worked there.

It seems Hack The Box works quite differently, could the following questions be answered?

I think it is quite a bit different. If you want to see a third different approach have a look at vuln hub.

  1. Are Machine Instances public? - While working on the Blunder Box I noticed that posts were being added and a PHP reverse shell was uploaded. In TryHackMe instances are private and I can deploy the machine and terminate the machine as I please.

Depends what you mean by public. There are available to anyone who is connected to the same VPN as you.

  1. How do Machine resets work? I subscribed and noticed that I get Unlimited machine resets? What does this actually mean? Am I resetting the machine for other users?

It means you can reset the machines as often as you want.

It resets for everyone using the same VPN.

This is one of the biggest complaints from people on the free servers.

  1. When I try to stop the Machine (Like i would on TryHackMe) It responds with the message You do not own this machine assignment, what does this mean?

It means the machine hasn’t been assigned to you. You can only issue a stop if the machine has been assigned to you. If a machine is assigned to you and you do issue a stop, if other people are using it, it gets transferred to them rather than stopped.

  1. I clicked Transfer Ownership - What does this actually mean?

It means the machine is assigned to you.

Any anwsers to my questions are greatly appreciated.

3

glad you had the courage to ask these, as a noob I had some of the same questions. Regarding the complaints for free users, should I as a VIP user do I not need to worry about resetting machines?

4

@Scooter825 said:

glad you had the courage to ask these, as a noob I had some of the same questions. Regarding the complaints for free users, should I as a VIP user do I not need to worry about resetting machines?

Well, you can reset them as much as you want but this is likely to seriously offend anyone else using the same machine as you. As a VIP user, it is less likely that users will be on the same box on the same VPN but it does happen.

Also, every reset takes 2 minutes to initiate (during which time other users on the same VPN can cancel it) and some boxes take a further 2 - 3 minutes for every service to start up.

Resetting should only be done when you have a legitimate reason.