Playground

The attack playground is a machine to work from. Ssh into it and you get a throwaway Linux container of your own, on a network that reaches the exercise endpoints and nothing else — somewhere to run your tools without setting anything up and without touching your own machine.

Connecting

ssh guestuser@researchlabs -p 2222

Any password will do, and any username — the playground lets everyone in, because there is nothing behind the door to protect. You land in a shell straight away. Leave the shell, by exit or by closing the window, and your container is gone; ssh in again for a fresh one.

A container each

Every session gets its own Ubuntu container, with the usual tooling already in it — gcc, python, git, curl, wget, netcat, ping, nslookup and dig. Nobody else is in yours, and you are in nobody else's.

Nothing persists

The filesystem is scratch space that lives in memory and disappears with the session. Keep anything you want to keep somewhere else, and break anything you like — the next login starts clean.

A closed network

From inside, researchlabs.tech is the exercise endpoints. That is the whole of the network: no internet, no other machines, and no route to anyone else's container.

Worth knowing

There is no internet in there. Bring what you need with you — paste a script in, or write it on the spot — rather than planning to pip install or apt-get it.
A session is small on purpose: a modest memory and cpu budget, a read-only system and no root. It is a place to run tools from, not a place to build a distro or mine anything.
Sessions are capped, so if the playground turns you away it is full rather than broken. Close a shell you are done with and try again shortly.
Attack the exercise endpoints, and nothing else. Everything outside them is out of scope, and the network is arranged so that it stays that way.