Cyber LAB E-Learning Support

You are using an email address or email domain that is not eligible for registration. Reasons might be:

You have made a typing error

Please check again exactly which email address you have entered in the username field. Typos are indeed responsible for 50% of all login problems.

Your company uses different email domains

Your company has activated an e-mail domain as legitimate (e.g. company.com), but you are using another one (e.g. subdomain.company.com or company.net). Typically, you should use the e-mail address where you received the invitation with the registration link. If this does not work, please contact the person responsible for training in your company and ask him/her for the valid domain.

This error can have 2 causes:

Your e-mail address is not eligible

You are trying to register with an email address that is not activated for registration. Your company administrator can activate single e-mail addresses or whole domains (@company.com) for registration in the LAB Portal.

Solution: Register with an email address valid for registration. It should usually be the address to which you received the invitation with the registration link. In case of doubt, please ask the course administrator.

Your account is not activated

You have created an account but have not yet completed the second step of account activation. The registration process consists of two steps:

1. You enter your e-mail address (which is eligible for registration). 
2. You will receive an e-mail from noreply@is-fox.com with an activation link. You click this link to complete the registration successfully.  

Solution: Without activation of the account you can not log in. Please look for the activation email in your inbox and in your spam or junk folder. In 99.9% of activation problems, the activation emails are delivered properly and miraculously found there 😉. Click the activation link to finish your registration.

This error can have 2 causes (beside a typo in your email address, but we assume you have double checked this already):

You entered the wrong password

The password does not match the stored password.

Solution: Enter the correct password. If you do not remember it, click Forgot password. You will receive an e-mail from noreply@is-fox.com with a password reset link. Please also check your inbox and your spam or junk folder. Click that link to reset your password. 

Your account is not activated

You have created an account but have not yet completed the second step of account activation. The registration process consists of two steps:

1. You enter your e-mail address (which is eligible for registration). 
2. You will receive an e-mail from noreply@is-fox.com with an activation link. You click this link to complete the registration successfully.  

Solution: Without activation of the account you can not log in. Please also check your inbox and your spam or junk folder. Click the activation link to finish your registration.

Invalid invitation link. Please ensure that it matches the one you received from your company. If the link is correct and does not work, please contact the person who invited you.

This error can have 2 causes:

The link is misspelled

This might happen if you copy and paste the link from somewhere and missed one or two characters. Please double-check this.

The link has expired

If the link is supposed to be correct (because you only clicked it, for example) and leads to this error message, then it has highly probable expired. 

The LAB E-Learnings are usually provided for a certain period of time. After this time, access to the LAB Portal and the LABs is no longer possible. Please contact the responsible person in your company, because someone has to insert coins again for the training to continue ,😉.

This issue can have 2 causes:

1. You didn't check your junk folder

Before you write a support e-mail, be sure to check your junk folder. In 99.9% percent of "e-mail not received" support cases, the email was in the junk folder and that's always a bit of an embarrassing situation... of all things for an IT pro. 😁

2. The e-mail service has a malfunction or our e-mails are blocked

If there is no e-mail neither in your inbox nor in your junk folder, please send us a support e-mail (see at the bottom of this page). We will check our logs to see if the email was sent at all and if it was accepted by your email server.

The start of the Admin LAB should be completed in 8 - 12 minutes. If this is not the case, there are two possible causes:

Browser is not refreshing
The browser window should refresh automatically. In some cases this does not happen. Solution: Please refresh the browser window manually (F5).

The LAB start is broken
This is very unlikely but unfortunately possible. Solution: If you waited longer than 20 minutes, refreshed your browser and the LAB is still not started, then it's time to open a support ticket with us (support@is-fox.de).

The Admin LAB is running. You clicked on "Connect to LAB" and got a new tab with a login screen. But you can not log in. Potential reasons are:

Security restrictions (for demo users only)

Although the connection is RDP over https, it needs active components (web sockets). Application firewalls or other security systems may block those interactive connections. If you got an "official" invitation, the connection should be already whitelisted. For demo users, please follow up with your security department on this.

Wrong credentials

Did you use the credentials that are displayed to you in the LAB portal?

TIP: Copy the password from the LAB portal and paste it into the username field first. This way you can make sure that the correct content is in the clipboard.

You clicked on "Connect to LAB", entered your LAB credentials provided in the LAB Portal and reached the Work Resources. However, if you click on "Lab" you get  error message "could not establish connection to remote system".

The LAB is not ready yet

When starting the Admin LAB environment, several servers are booted in a certain order. it may happen that the RDP browser client in the Work Resources can already be called, but the services required for RDP have not yet been started. Solution: Give the system another 5 minutes and try again.

Security restrictions (for demo users only)

Although the connection is RDP over https, it needs active components (web sockets). Application firewalls or other security systems may block those interactive connections. If you got an "official" invitation, the connection should be already whitelisted. For demo users, please follow up with your security department on this.

The gateway server has a glitch

Windows systems are not designed for continuous use in hacking environments.  Unfortunately, in rare cases the LAB Gateway Server may simply refuse to work for no real apparent reason.

Solution: Check if there are other users in the LAB. If the gateway server is broken, this should not be the case. If nobody else is in the LAB, unfortunately you will have to reset the LAB. This can be done either by the person responsible for the course in your company or by us (lab-support@hvs-consulting.de). A complete LAB reset usually takes 40 - 60 minutes.

The Developer LAB is provided via VNC in the browser. Potential issues might be:

Security restrictions (for demo users only)
Although the connection is https, it needs active components (web sockets). Application firewalls or other security systems may block those interactive connections. If you got an "official" invitation, the connection should be already whitelisted. For demo users, please follow up with your security department on this.

The LAB is not ready yet
Maybe the LAB start isn't finished yet. The start of the Developer LAB should be completed in 5 - 8 minutes. Refresh the page by pressing F5.

Your browser has security restriction
In some cases, security add-ons or settings might block the connection to the LAB. Therefore, it is always worth trying with another browser.

The start of the Developer LAB should be completed in 5 - 8 minutes. If this is not the case, there are two possible causes:

A lot of requests
In rare cases, simultaneous requests in the LAB Portal and/or Microsoft Azure accumulate and your request cannot be processed immediately, but is put in a queue. Solution: Give the system another 10 minutes.

The LAB start is broken
In even rarer cases, our system could simply have a glitch. Solution: If you waited longer than 25 minutes, refreshed your browser and the LAB is still not started, then it's time to open a support ticket with us (support@is-fox.de).

Actually you have much more time than you need and we have additionally installed a timer in the LAB, which shuts down the LAB after 2 hours of inactivity to save your contingent. However, in rare cases it can happen that your time contingent is used up before you are finished.

Solution: Just write us an email (support@is-fox.de) and we are happy to give you some more hours.

MOST COMMON OPTION 1: The clipboard does not process input properly

Sometimes, the RDP web client does not process input from the clipboard properly. This is the most reliable way to log in to PuTTY:

1. Copy the password from the LAB Portal to your clipboard.
   
   
2. Open Notepad in the RDP session (Windows key - type Notepad).
   
   
3. Paste the content of your clipboard with CTRL + V (or the respective combination of your operating system) into Notepad. You should see now your password in Notepad. If not please check Option 2.
   
   
4. Now open the PuTTY window. 
   
   
5. Enter IP 10.10.0.100 and your username in lowercase letters. 
   
   
6. When asked for the password, paste your password with SHIFT + INSERT (or alternatively right-click) in PuTTY and then press ENTER. You won't see the password inserted in PuTTY, but it will work. 

We know that PuTTY is sometimes a little bit "bitchy", but since years it never was broken. The steps above typically always work.

Option 2: Your RDP settings do not allow clipboard communication 

If you tried to paste the password into Notepad and nothing happend, it is very likely that the clipboard is not allowed to communicate with the remote session. The RDP web connection typically asks you on launch if you want to allow Clipboard communication:

Please end the RDP session and start a new one. If the selection above does not appear during start, please start the RDP web connection in a private window or delete cookies. 

Option 1: Your RDP settings do not allow clipboard communication 

Please ensure in the RDP connection, if the Clipboard is allowed to communicate with the remote session. The RDP web connection typically asks you on launch if you want to allow Clipboard communication:

If you don't remember the settings, please start the RDP web connection in a private window or delete cookies. But you also can try Option 2 first. 

Option 2: The clipboard does not process input properly

Sometimes, the RDP web client does not process input from the clipboard properly. To check this, please execute the following steps:

1. Open Notepad in the RDP session (Windows key - type Notepad).
2. Copy the content of the clipboard with CTRL + V into Notepad. 

If you can paste the password with CTRL + V in Notepad, it will also work with SHIFT + INSERT (or a right-click) in PuTTY.

Perfect! Works as designed 🙂. Of course, we don't want you to play around with hacking tools outside the LAB. That's why it's intentional that the LAB can't connect to the outside.

If you follow the instructions in the e-learning and copy the commands via the clipboard, no error messages should actually occur. One possible reason might be a new DOS box. Did you take a break? And closed the CMD in the process? Some users then forget to run the CMD as administrator or use the "privilege::debug" command in order to get admin rights again.

Solution: Go back to part, where you start with Mimikatz and follow the instructions.

1. Start CMD as Admin (run as adminisrator)
2. Start mimikatz
3. Extend your rights with the command privilege::debug
4. Execute the command sekurlsa::pth …

You open the web browser in the LAB, enter the paradise-resort.club and get a connection timeout. This could have two reasons

You are in the wrong LAB (very likely)

You are assigned to Admin LAB and Developer LAB and you are using the Admin LAB to execute developer scenarios, which is impossible. 

Solution: Check the right LAB. If you are in the RDP session on a Windows machine, you are in the Admin LAB. If you are on a Linux machine, you are in the Developer LAB. Choose the Developer LAB to execute exercises with Paradise Resort.

If you do not see a selection for a Developer LAB, please register for the Developer LAB using the provided registration link, even if you have already registered for the Admin LAB. When you use the registration link for the Developer LAB, this LAB resource is added to your account.

The LAB has a glitch (very unlikely)

If you made sure that you are in the developer LAB (a Linux machine) and you can't open the paradise-resort.club page, then maybe your LAB has a malfunction. 

Solution: Stop the existing LAB, wait a moment, and request a new LAB again by clicking the "Preload" button again. This will create a completely new LAB based on the master image.