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OSWP - the wee journey

_nessie__nessie_ Member Posts: 39 ■■■□□□□□□□
Hello all,

(no, I'm not Vivek icon_lol.gif)
Attempted the OSWP exam yesterday and got the "you passed" message today.
As I did with previous certs and since I really appreciate the information that's around in this site, I feel like I should contribute (albeit not with self-written icon_study.gif)
Anyway,
after passing the eJPT a couple of months ago, I was looking into the wireless field of things.
Merely because I wanted to set up some demonstrations in one of the areas I'm responsible for at work: general cyber awareness. And on the other hand, I felt I was thrown back in time to the early 2000's, when I, together with a fellow student, tried to prove wireless networks were unsafe, following proofs of concepts and scare documentation. If I recall correctly, things didn't turn out the way we hoped it did. I know fully understand why icon_cheers.gif. Patching wireless drivers in order to get things to work .. pfiew, we did suffer ...

I looked up quite some information about the OSWP (Offensive Security) and the SWSE (SecurityTube) before diving into things.
People have to make choices and I eventually went for OSWP.
However, I need to admit that I first crunched through the freely available SWSE Megaprimer. That took quite some time, but then again, I'm commuting by train and thus could spend some time reading/viewing/listening (if I didn't fall asleep).
The reason for going the OSWP route, was merely the structure of the course.
Although I feel both cover equal material at an equal level of quality, the setup of the Wi-Fu fits more my liking: structure, structure, structure :) But hey, that's my opinion.
That said, I took the road the first videos of Wi-Fu laid out for you: go through the theory in the book first and then come back.
I actually forgot that there were video's after a while and got through all the attack methods before I realised: hey, there are still some videos.
As such, I actually went another time through the course material, by following the videos and working in the labs a second time.
This actually was another plus IMVHO compared to Vivek's course: the way the labs were approached, were more natural .. probably because of the forementioned structure.
Either way, I had both references running at the same time, getting through the labs until I found myself confident enough, grabbing the most important key points in a mindmap and added more information as I felt the need to.
Found in the meanwhile another easy to follow reference Wi-Fu - Home and had the wikipages of the aircrack suite at hand.
There's more information available nowadays than back in 2002/2003, that's for sure.
After going through all the labs and tried all the setups I could think off (oh, and making quite some mistakes along the way), I felt I was ready and decided to go for the exam .. the day after icon_lol.gif
The funny thing is, I then started to go over the possible scenarios that would render the task difficult. That was probably due to the uncertainty of the layout of the exam/challenge itself.
Either way, I still had the time to test out one or two things I hadn't so far, and actually spend a bit more time on setting up rogue APs as I felt I didn't spend that much time on them.
I was eager to start the challenge and hoped I'd have enough time going through all of it.
I frequently made copies of what I was doing and had particular directories set up to store all of it.
Needless to say I was a bit, well, um .. really? after about an hour .. have I really finished it?
Proved I had and that I'd been well prepared.
Took the time for a run and started working on the report, which I finished after about 2-3 hours, haven't timed actually.
Still nervous to get the result and happy it turned out positive today .. yay icon_cheers.gif
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