News
Goodbye Jungle, Hello Chaos! Season 5 is about containment
Your second Rift transported you to a dark and treacherous place. Can you bring it back online?
JXoaT,
Apr 12
2024
Table of Contents
Anomalies
You finish the final machine! With the last outpost out of the way, you’re set on exiting this hostile jungle. A script running in the background opens a terminal with a simple message
“Not bad, challenger. But this is hardly the time to celebrate. :)”
As the last word leaves your mind, two dark pylons jettison from the floor behind you and cast a familiar blue light over your shoulder. You turn to see the next Rift– and your next challenge.
SCP Facility - Haymaker
As you enter the rift, you are greeted by momentary darkness. The first sound that reaches your ears is a siren alarm blaring. An ominous message begins to cycle over an intercom.
“Alert–a facility wide breach is currently in effect. All agents begin designated containment procedures.”
Orange emergency lights begin to strobe, giving you a glimpse of a harsh, reinforced enclosure.
The metal-plated walls are smeared with deep gashes, while other areas have corrosive craters covered in smoldered bits of heavy iron that run like melted candle wax.
Your observation is cut short! A loud clang from the main door unlatches, as lights and sounds begin to pour in behind two figures in hazmat suits. Voices emerge from the suits: one is a scraggly male voice, and the other is a clear, decisive female voice.
Agent Tex: “You’re not anomaly 3k! How'd you get in here?!”
Agent Rhia: “Tex it’s not the biggest concern–they are clearly a civ.” She begins to size you up. ”Look, whoever you are, for your own safety you’re coming with us. Tex fill him in while I try this comms panel.”
Agent Tex: “Alright buster, this here facility is Haymaker. You want to survive the next 20 minutes? Don’t touch anything, run when we tell you, and follow our every instruction to the letter. Someone infiltrated this facility and caused a system-wide collapse, releasing some not-so-friendlies we call “Anomalies.”
He points to the walls. “The anomaly inhabiting the room before you got here did all the interior decorating you see here.”
Agent Rhia: “This comms panel has the same prompt- 1 attempt, ‘How did you get here, challenger?’ Who would wreck our systems and leave this nonsense?”
You calmly walk up to the terminal and gesture towards giving it a try. Agent Rhia hesitates but lets you pass. “Be my guess, something tells me you being here is no coincidence.”
You type in “Rift.” Suddenly, A map populates the entirety of the facility and marks 13 locations.
Agent Tex: “I’ll be a goat on AstroTurf, kid, you might as well be strange enough to hang with us after all.”
After a brief summary of your stint in Savage Lands and the challenge, you win over your reluctant new comrades.
Agent Rhia: “While I’m not thrilled that we got brought into this competition of yours, it’s on par with the normal amount of chaos we deal with here. Alright, let’s lock down these terminals, contain this breach, and hope nothing finds us on our way.”
Tex chuckles.
Agent Tex: “Heh, and if we’re lucky, the Foundation won’t decide to blow this place to kingdom come!”
With that, you make your way into the facility, where the sounds of the unknown begin to echo through the halls. Make no mistake, you now roam the halls with creatures beyond your comprehension and artifacts that defy the very laws of nature.
Good luck, challenger!
We want to give a shout out to the SCP Wiki’s Internet Outreach Team for help advising our story this Season!
This work incorporates elements from the SCP Foundation, which are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) License. The full text of this license can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.
Portions of this work that include, refer to, or are based upon "rifts" are proprietary to Hack The Box and are not subject to the CC BY-SA 3.0 license. These portions are provided for use under terms that differ from the Creative Commons license and are copyrighted by Hack The Box.
For any parts of this work not specifically delineated as proprietary to Hack The Box, or for any use of SCP Foundation elements, the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License apply. Under this license, you are free to share and adapt the material as long as you provide appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
Recap: Season 4
Savage Lands Winners
Our ranks are growing! This Season, we had over 9k challengers battling out for top spots. More and more hackers are joining in solo and with teams. We will talk more about that here.
First!
Let’s check the scoreboard and see the top of this Season’s food-chain. 🔥
Want to make a note that snowscan and xct have been duking it out the last two Seasons. Wonder who will beat the tiebreaker for the next upcoming Season! Congrats to celesian for their first top three Season performance!
Top Teams of the Season
This season we saw a rise in team participation! I'd like to point out that this is the second Season in a row that TheATeam has taken the top spot. Can anyone dethrone these juggernauts?
1. TheATeam
2. Cyb3rGh0st
Seasons 5 update: find your team on Discord
Whether it’s content creators or internal security teams, we have been seeing a rise in pushing forward together! If you’re looking for a team, be sure to check the find-a-team forum under our HTB: Seasons Discord channel!
Tyler Ramsbey created a team of avid learners, took plunge into the depths of Savage Lands and created a fun promo to build hype. If you’re looking for a team to join for Seasons or upcoming Hack The Box CTFs, be sure to check out Tyler’s Discord!
Our friend Robbe Van Roey (aka PinkDraconian) and the product security team at Toreon collectively show one of the best ways to bring a team together! We were thrilled to see teams out in the wild bringing our Machines into the workday.
He had this to say:
“Every month, the ethical hacking team at Toreon comes together to do the following: hack a Machine on Hack The Box, eat pizza, have a great time! We use the platform to focus on team building and training our skills. This knowledge sharing and teamwork are instrumental in our ability to do our jobs as penetration testers or application security experts.”
Be sure to try Release Arena
Did you know you can use Release Arena and have your own isolated connection to tackle this Season’s Machines?
Well, it’s possible! Only â…“ of Release Arena connections are being used.
For those unfamiliar, Release Arena operates on a dedicated VPN, allowing users to engage with machines in an isolated performance-efficient environment! This is perfect for free-to-play users looking to gain an edge.
You can make the switch by toggling to Release Arena in your VPN settings.
Be sure to remember, access is live from Saturday to Wednesday and has limited pre-spawned machines. Be sure to make the switch and try it for yourself!
Will you secure the breach?
Ready to contain these anomalies? Brace yourself for further adventures by heading over to our Season Landing Page. Dive deeper into the chaos, team up with fellow challengers, and uncover the secrets of the Rift. Click here to continue your journey into the unknown!
