I can show you the door, But you got to Walk thru for OSCP

unkn0wnsh3ll

Hello all,

I came across this forum recently, though I have been member of ethicalhacker. Its been quite interesting to read everyone's experience and their walk through OSCP. Its been inspiring and thought to start my thread, which might help people with similar kind of background and their thoughts to attempt OSCP.

I'm working in IT for very long number of years, lets say, 20+years and have worked in Development when starting my career with C,C++,VC++ language and moved into ASP,VB, JScript etc... Over a decade transitioned myself into Testing like Performance testing, Functional automation testing on multi domain areas. You guys can get an idea when I said 20 years into IT means I have worked in most domains. My interests started focussing into Security testing being niche area and one cannot master all aspects of it and got to focus on certain area and specialise and slowly build up specialities in it.

Now back to reality and hope not to bore too much on history....

Around 2 years back, started to study security testing and build up my basic knowledge on it. I'm very much into Windows environment and Linux/Unix environment is like foreign land though on my career I have come across unix environment while testing application, my knowledge was in and round listing, copy, move, change directory, change permission level. I came across OSCP and there was a debate in myself to whether opt for OSCP or eCPPT. I understood the magnitude of OSCP and necessary time to develop my skill, considering my family and work nature, I preferred to do eCPPT. It was a wonderful journey which put me to crawl and foot strong enough to manage and stand myself. Completed the course and felt very happy. I thought to myself that the website I come across would have vulnerability SQLInjection and XSS injection, directory traversal etc.... But again the reality is not every website is like that in outside world. I tried to implement my newly developed skill at my workplace though my role was Automation specialist. There was a good understanding from my management on my skill and trying to bring in new technology into work place.

ummmm, I believe readers should be given ample break enough to understand the path I'm trying walk, So I do not want you guys to get exhausted on my first post, Okay for now, I give a Break........Cont.....

unkn0wnsh3ll

Now its your choice to continue the second post at a stretch or take a break and come back

Continuing from previous post, My work place was happy on new technology and new process I'm trying to bring into place. There was a new position put in place at infrastructure team "Security Manager" [Please dont think I was given that opportunity ] One of the senior person in the infrastructure team was given Security Manager and I started interacting with him and shown some demos and my qualification which resulted positive for me.

At this point of time, Atleast for the market purpose, I need to equip with other certifications and hence opted for Certified Ethical Hacker sponsored by company and ECSA out of my pocket. Frankly speaking Certified Ethical Hacking is very well worth in terms of more in theory and considering the study like BootCamp in training institute and writing the multiple choice answers at the end 4 days is not giving much technical knowledge. Since I had idea of eCPPT, I somehow sailed past the CEH and ECSA and that year was like big achievement to me as I got completed eCPPT, CEH, and ECSA. At workplace only couple of people who knows the value of Security understood the achievement. There was a career move which had to do with more of travelling. This eventually put me off the Security domain for last two years to be precise, though I have been updating myself with articles which i read across blogs. After couple of jumps in my career, I have settled with my current job and thinking of continuing my passion to study OSCP.

By the way, I would like to highlight, I do not know whether I will enter into Security Domain or not, but the passion keeps me to learn new. I have gone through so many reviews on OSCP and understood, I need to equip myself first before opening the door. I'm not sure if I'm taking right approach, but first thing I started to Hit in my list was Buffer Overflow. I do not have idea why I choose this, but I have interest for Exploit Research Development and hence I was dragged into it....I started to learn through corelean, Fuzzsecurity, SecuritySift, Grey Corner, Security tube websites and understood the basic concepts. These websites helped understand concept on different people's point of view and when working on video based Megaprimer on Vivek Ramachandran's Securitytube, It straight hit my head while practicing the demo. It is such an awesome subject, I'm still in amateure level, yet to learn DEP, ASLR, ROP concepts. But I think for OSCP level basic should be fine, though when I get time, I will try to learn these too before starting OSCP...

Next I'm also started working on shell script... Trying to bridge the gap of my simple commands and learning grep, Sed, Awk, find commands to write shell script...Learning Python is in queue, but when working on Exploit research primer, I was able to write Basic Exploit POC and develop to working exploit. Not sure if this python knowledge is enough for OSCP... May be You guys could tell me...

I have setup a virtual lab at home where I have downloaded vulnerable ISO's. I was able to do Nebula level00, though I came across few hints on website. ISO's like De-Ice, Holynix etc is also in my lab. I do not have clue on how to break in after certain level.

I understand certain steps like reconnaissance, finding out Services,ports and versions of OS, Services etc, but the thing is it straight hits blank what next. Then started working on based on information gathered, I have venture into those service and try find out exploits etc... I believe eCPPT is like working on website security testing, where we are given with vulnerable ISO and start to test it. Whereas, on OSCP every newbie or a learner might have faced this, after this particular process "What Am I to do with this information?"....

To continue......