TryHackMe Vs HackTheBox comparison 2023

HackTheBox and TryHackMe are platforms oriented to training focused mainly on offensive security operations and to learn cybersecurity, what happens is that many users often do not know which one to start with and, in this article we will see a comparison of these two platforms so you know in which one to invest your time.

First, let’s start by making a clarification, directly comparing HackTheBox with TryHackMe is like comparing cilantro with spinach, HackTheBox is a platform that natively only has challenges and machines without any kind of study guide, there are only the challenges, the machines and your attitude to solve them independently, which in TryHackMe does not happen very often.

Although there are also machines and challenges without guide, TryHackMe is more oriented to explain step by step how to solve each challenge or machine, if we put it in words, HackTheBox would tell you “what’s up man, you must find a way to solve this, bye” and TryHackMe would say “hello my king, this is solved this way, did you learn?” so, making a direct comparison, as a start in cybersecurity will always leave TryHackMe as the winner.

We have already seen that, if we talk about a literal comparison between HackTheBox or TryHackMe, when you are just starting, it will always be better TryHackMe but, HackTheBox created a platform called “HackTheBox Academy” which is quite similar to TryHackMe in the way of teaching, since here you do have challenges and guided machines, where, as in TryHackMe, they teach you step by step how to solve them, not so that you solve them and that’s it, obviously so that you learn in the process, accumulating points is useless, the important thing is the knowledge.

Therefore, HackTheBox Academy is a direct competitor of TryHackMe because it is mainly oriented to people who are just starting and does not have the philosophy “solve this on your own” which is really a correct philosophy, because in the day to day working in cybersecurity, you will not have a guide, you must be very independent, but, it is something that, if you are starting, can frustrate you to the point of giving up (the worst).

Now, since 2017 and 2018 that started HackTheBox and TryHackMe correspondingly, these platforms have had several “failures” along its history, TryHackMe has been echo of many criticisms due to the isolation of users, since, when you connect by VPN to TryHackMe’s network of machines and challenges, this has a feature due to its internal infrastructure that, if you are on the same VPN server as other users, These users will be able to see your networked device and interact with you. Although this is not something that should really happen, it is not at all something that is 100% insecure, in fact many situations should happen simultaneously so that you could really be in danger and it is a “failure” that even the HackTheBox platform can have, not in such a direct way but in many simultaneous circumstances it can also occur.

So, that this is not an impediment to use both platforms, really the probability that you suffer a security incident in any of them because of this “bug” (out of speculation) is really low.

To conclude, the most important thing in cybersecurity is not the platform where you learn, it is your attitude towards wanting to learn every day, since there are many more alternatives.