Advent of Cybersecurity 2023

TryHackMe puts on an annual security 101 suite of educational content aimed at novice level IT hobbyists/professionals with great detailed prompts, guides, and curated environments for a safe place to explore the world of cyber security. The Advent of Cyber.

This year started out very similar to last years, except it contains the concept of a "Side Quest" where even finding it involved implementing techniques from it's archives, and has an extremely lively discord chat dedicated to it with folks commiserating about their journey or celebrating their successes.

TL;DR:

The side quest is made up of 4 parts, each about a week apart. They include a prompt like most of the others, but no real goal other than it's standard answer boxes. It's up to the attacker to choose their direction, toolbelt, and how to spend their time.

I'm also exploring this side quest and sharing in my follies, failures, and fun. I'm not sure if I'll complete it as of the writing of this post, but after the write-up blackout period is over (December 27th) I will have any write-ups I completed released. As of now I've finished up to Side Quest #2 and am deeply looking forward to the next challenge.

SQ 1: Day 0
SQ 2: Day 6
SQ 3: Day 11
SQ 4: Day 20