Category: Certifications, Courses and Books

I took this exam right after Security+ Before taking this exam I had no knowledge or experience of penetration testing beyond a bit of theoretical knowledge. For someone who has been apprehensive of venturing into the offensive security, and felt overwhelmed by the amount of information out there, this was the perfect first step.

Resource and Preparation

The free training offered by eLearnSecurity on the INE platform was sufficient. The information was a bit scarce in terms of theory, but since this is a practical exam that wasn’t a problem. However, for people who’d like to go a bit deeper this leaves you wanting for more understanding (which I suppose is the point).

Pay special attention to the labs, I did them twice over, and one of them thrice until the commands I needed to run and why stuck.

The exam is two days long, although it can definitely be done in one day or even in a couple of hours. It took me a full 24 hours including, all meals and 6 hours of sleep after I woke up and promptly finished the exam half an hour later. The exam itself is easy so if you’ve done all the labs, don’t be afraid and go for it. I’d heard some stories of the VPN connection to the lab being unstable, this wasn’t true for me. The connection was consistently stable throughout.

Tip

Check all your tools work correctly, I spent a couple of hours wrestling with a tool because I had updated it, and wasted time looking at alternates, none of which worked for me.