Ethical Hacker Community Forums

Hi All,

I've just signed up for the OffSec101 course starting 13th July. At the moment I'm bouncing around like a kiddy at christmas waiting for it to start :D

Basically I was looking for some advice from those that have already taken (or currently taking) the course with regard to the best way to study the material.

Also from posts I've read here and elsewhere the final exam sounds a bit evil. Any advice on which aspects of the material to learn 100% would also be apreciated.

Thanks in advance, just hoping talking about the course may calm me down some :)
RR

I know it states that programming knowledge isn't really needed but throughout the course you do write useful bash scripts. If I were in your position I'd get a better grasp on using your choice of an IDE (Muts uses nano throughout the course I believe) to write bash scripts.

just watch the videos, read, and work thru the labs and ask questions after you do some thinking and googling.  I found some of the people (non-offsec people) in the forums and irc to be less than helpful.  kind of annoying.

Cheers for the responses guys, just got access to the course material today (wish I was at work, the download would be faster :( ) Printer is currently in overdrive ;)

Hopefully the programming section shouldn't be too much of an issue, I come from a development/Linux admin background so know the basics. (plus I use nano too :) )

I've been hanging around in the irc channel for a few days, seem to be similar to most communication places on the web. Plenty of useful helpful people providing you can take the high-road and ignore some of the less usefull comments.

I would just say, that if you have the time try working on the EXTRA Mile ex, if you are planning to take the challenge, that can be very very useful :):)

All I can say is its a fun course and the challenge is really cool.

VJ

Cheers Vijay,

I got access to the course material yesterday and so far it's great. I've watched the videos for the first two modules and gone through the exercises (inc. extra mile) for module 1.

Haven't had too much opportunity to hit the labs yet due to the nature of the first few modules. But from what I've seen there is plenty to play with and I can't wait to get more involved. I'm having to try really hard to stick with the course material and not just dive straight in with hacking around the lab.

Biggest issue I've had so far is getting my head around using Leo. Think I'm starting to figure it out and I'm starting to see the benefit of using it. Just wish there was some mention of Leo in some of the preperation material so I could have gained experience before getting the material. If any one is planning on taking the course spend at least a bit of time looking at Leo for documentation.

its trying to teach you to document, which is important once you start taking a look at alot hosts and then trying to remember what was open on what and what was vulnerable to what, etc.

Documentation is so important specially working with a large network. Leo is not the only way to keep notes, but it does give you that nice "tree" effect.

Agreed guys, I'm starting to get the hang of it. The 'tree' view seems to fit in with how my brain works. Also it's nice (and extremely useful) to slowly see the information gathered about the network grow as you work through the activities.

Any links for this Leo.
I would be interested to have a look at this myself.

Thanks.

Dale,

• decent writeup of Leo on WikiPedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_(text_editor)).
• Leo homepage HERE (http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html)
• download from SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/leo/)

Easiest way to learn (at least for me) is just to play with it. Mutz has a nice video showing it's us to document pen-test findings, not sure if it is world viewable or students only. If I can find a public link I'll update.

Thanks, I will have a look into it.
Cheers for the links.

BTW, for me the default setting in Leo are poor. So if you feel the same, don't forget to customize the fonts,etc...

Just got my OSCP over the weekend! I am on cloud freakin nine right now. What a wildly fun class. The only thing I have to say (and I hope the instructors aren't reading this) is that I found the exam to not be as difficult as people were letting on. As long as you relax and don't let yourself get overwhelmed (and provided you did the coursework), it should just be more of the same. A 24-hour test, and within 8 hours I had already passed.  ;D

Good luck to everyone else who is taking or thinking about taking this fantastic course!

And if anyone is hiring in the Austin, TX area, let me know.  ;)

Congrats Man,


VJ

Well done that man!

As I'm coming to the end of my labtime (~1 week to go) it's nice to see some flying through the exam. I don't want to discuss details or provide spoilers in a public forum, but did you manage to defeat all of the challange servers?

Currently I've rooted 30%, and am around 90% through another 30%. Having difficulties with two of them, but I'd guess you know which two I'm talking about ;)

I'm considering extending my lab time for another 30 days just to complete the challanges. Is this something you'd recommend or should I aim for the exam and get on with it?

Thanks in advance, and congrats again.
RR

As far as the challenge servers go, I do know which two you are talking about, and I never managed to get them, though I got pretty close on one of them according to the solutions I've seen. Those two seem to be pretty troublesome for most students I think. In the end, I got five of the seven final challenges, and got most of the extra mile stuff in the coursework...but not before my initial 30 days lab time ended. I opted to extend it for another 30 days, and I'm glad I did. Just having the extra practice in and of itself is worth the money in my opinion. The final challenges probably helped me out more than anything else on the exam, but I recommend leaving a little time to rewatch the videos, too. I took the test two weeks after my lab time ended, and I think that was a pretty good way to get in enough review while still having the material fresh on my mind.

HeadlessZeke,

thanks for the heads up, I've been trying to get a better feel for the exam as I have been unable to gain any real insight into what is involved. So far I'm leaning towards following in your footsteps and taking the exam fairly soon after completing my lab time (took 60 days initially, but wasted too much time with r/w issues).

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