Wednesday evenings are always something I look forward to—mainly because it means one thing: Study Buddy time. And this week was a good one.
It was my first CPSA study buddy session, and the group was led by Peter, who took us through a cracking VulnHub challenge: “DC-7: Outside the Box.”
The challenge? A seemingly simple web page with a login box. But as always in cyber, nothing is ever just a login page. Peter demonstrated how to think like a hacker—using enumeration techniques, source code inspection, and a bit of creative probing to uncover hidden vulnerabilities and files the average user would never see.
We explored:
- Manual inspection of HTML and scripts to pull out clues
- SQL injection attempts and how login pages often become the first puzzle piece
- And general lateral thinking—the kind that makes you question everything a site shows you on the surface
It was a great reminder that cybersecurity is just as much about mindset as it is about tools. Watching Peter work through the challenge was like seeing a magician explain their trick—only the rabbit was a vulnerable login form, and the hat was a misconfigured server.
What I Learned
- Don’t trust the surface—dig into the code, the directories, the structure
- VulnHub is a goldmine for real-world practice—hands-on is where it clicks
- Sometimes, the vulnerability isn’t technical—its just thinking “outside the box”
Even though I was mostly watching this time around, it was inspiring to see how the skills we’re building in CPSA training come together in action. It’s one thing to study theory—it’s another to see it exploited live in a sandbox environment.
I left the session buzzing with ideas, itching to try some of the techniques for myself on the next box. Big thanks to Peter for running the evening and sharing his insight.
Until next time…
Still fumbling my way through CPSA, one enumeration attempt at a time—
but hey, even slow scans eventually find open ports!
