Hack The Box: How to get invite code

Spoiler Alert : I suggest you to try to hack your way into the site, before actually reading anything below. If you fail after considerable tries or you want to know a method which may be different than yours, you can follow along below.

What is Hack The Box :

It is basically an online platform to test and advance your skills in penetration testing and cyber security. It contains several challenges that are constantly updated. Some of them simulating real world scenarios and some of them leaning more towards a CTF style of challenge. You should try this site out if you have interest in network security or information security.

Now, let’s hack our way in! Shall we?

Hack The Box Website

1. First, visit the Hack the Box site and read along its FAQs and other useful stuff written there.
2. You will be told to go to https://www.hackthebox.eu/invite to join HTB.
3. When you go to that page, you will see a text box asking you for an invite code.
4. Right click on the page, and open inspect element. Alternatively, press Ctrl+Shift+I to open the Chrome Developers Tools.
5. Go through the elements tab and you will find a script with source as: /js/inviteapi.min.js

See the script src: /js/inviteapi.min.js

6. So now, go to https://www.hackthebox.eu/js/inviteapi.min.js . You will see a JS file like this.

See the makeInviteCode which is highlighted

7. makeInviteCode looks interesting. So let’s go back to https://www.hackthebox.eu/invite and try to find its contents.

8. Goto console tab in Chrome Developer Tools, and type makeInviteCode() and press ENTER. You will get a 200 Success status and data as shown below.

See the message in data

9. When you click the small arrow alongside data, you will see the encoding type to be Base64.

Base64 enc type

10.Let’s decode that message! Copy the contents of data. And search online for a Base64 Decryptor. I used the Google search’s first result: https://www.base64decode.org/

11. Paste the copied data onto the text box and click DECODE. You will get something like below.

12. So, in order to generate an invite code, we need to make a POST request to https://www.hackthebox.eu/api/invite/generate.

13. Fire up your terminal. And make a POST request by typing:

curl -XPOST https://www.hackthebox.eu/api/invite/generate

14. You will get a success message as:

{“success”:1,”data”:{“code”:”somerandomcharacters12345=”,”format”:”encoded”},”0":200}

15. As you saw, we code a code. But this is not our invite code as it says format:encoded.

16. Lets’s try decoding it, by again using https://www.base64decode.org/.

17. Paste the code you got as the response of the POST request into the textbox. Voila! You get your invite code.

You get your invite code (Don’t try using this invite code as it won’t work for you)

18. Now, finally go to https://www.hackthebox.eu/invite and paste the Invite Code you got in the textbox asking for the same.

19. You’re in! You can sign up on the site now and become a member.

Happy Hacking!

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