Event Labs
The event labs can only be accessed through the VPN provided by ThreatSims.
The VPN only tunnels traffic to the private lab network so you can access the machines hosted in private IP addresses. It does not monitor or tunnel your entire internet traffic, so you can browse the internet as usual while connected to the Lab VPN.
Machines spawned in the lab are unique for your team and shared between all team members. Any member of your team can start and stop a machine.
Please follow the below steps to set up your private lab for the event:
Spawn your private lab for the event
On the event challenges page, find and click the “Lab Access” button:
This will open a side menu for you to manage your private lab access:
Click the “Spawn Your Private Lab” button to provision the private lab for your team. It can take up to 5 minutes for the lab to get provisioned and you have to do it only once during an event. The private lab will stay alive for the entire duration of the event.
Generate VPN config for your lab
Once the lab server is online, you can generate VPN config to connect to the lab network.
Click the “Generate VPN CONFIG For Lab Access” button to generate the VPN. It can take up to 2 minutes for the lab to generate a VPN config.
Two people cannot share the same VPN key to connect to the lab. So, Each member of your team has to generate their own OpenVPN config.
Download the VPN config file
Once the VPN config is generated, you can download it from the side menu. You have the option to choose between TCP and UDP protocols depending on your network conditions. If your network is prone to significant packet loss or congestion, TCP is the better choice due to its ability to handle such problems. On the other hand, if your network is stable and reliable, UDP is usually the preferred option.
If you want to switch between these options, select the protocol and re-download your VPN config file.
Connect to lab network using OpenVPN
Please make sure you have OpenVPN installed on your system.
Open your terminal and run the openvpn command along with the path to the downloaded VPN config file.
Once you see the message Initialization Sequence Completed, you’ve successfully established a connection to the lab network.
The side menu will reflect your connectivity status in a few minutes along with your private IP address on the lab network:
Once you are connected to the lab network, you can now spawn Machine Challenges and access the private IP addresses of the machines.