A word of caution about CEH V8/V9

DangerMan

I just barely passed my CEH V8 exam today, and while I should elated, I'm actually a bit angry.

I'll start off with a coworker's quote "I feel like I went to a baking class and was then given a plumbing exam."

So in preparation for CEH, I used the following:

1) Matt Walker AIO + Practice Exams books.
2) VTC CEH video course
3) Random youtube videos for topics I wanted more info on
4) EC Council Licensed bootcamp style exam prep class & labs (4 days + review day/exam day).

I'm not a certificate whiz, but I've successfully done two other boot camp style classes & exams (Security + and ITiLV3) and done pretty well in them, I've been in the tech industry a long time, and have an excellent memory and decent test taking skills.

The exam I had today was something I barely recognized. Over half the questions were topics that were not covered in any of my studies.

I had questions on hard drive failure costs, backup failure rates, and numerous questions on the Risk Management Framework (which is different from the risk triangle/risk analysis matrix), and other weird stuff that just made me wonder if I had gotten a the right test.

I know V9 drops on Nov 1, and I wonder how many V9 questions I might have gotten. I've heard there are always sample/dummy/test questions on certification exams, but there just seemed to be too many for it to just be a sampling.

Over half my boot camp class didn't pass - and these are smart people with tough certs behind them (Oracle, Cisco, Voip certs, etc.) from a wide range of disciplines - DBA's, networking guys, web developers, security admins, etc.

Regarding the exam, one person summed it up incredibly well "I feel like I went to a baking class and was then given a plumbing exam."

I didn't expect an automatic pass because my company paid the money and I showed up. I studied hard, participated in class, and felt I knew the material. I was getting 85s on the Matt Walker stuff, I was getting high 90s in the pre-tests given on the 3rd and final day of the bootcamp.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

danny069

Congrats on the pass! I have heard from people that recently took the exam that it was not what they had studied for, so it seems to me EC-Council is already implementing v9 questions on a supposedly v8 exam. Which is upsetting because I don't remember studying for hard drive failure costs, backup failure rates, etc. I am completely stunned. I may have to push back my exam date.

DangerMan

Thanks. Yea, I think postponing might be a good idea.

I've come away with two things.

1) EC Council is wacky.
2) Don't take a cert exam too close to a changeover.

cs8400

DangerMan wrote: »

Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

Yes. Took v8 not long ago and most of the material was quite different from the Boson and Matt Walker AIO/Total Tester practice exams. I barely passed as well.

knewbold

ive got my test tomorrow, not happy about it.

i can reschedule but it goes against ec councils terms and conditions

JusCoolin

Wow, and I'm set to test on the 19th. Well good to know, thank you for passing on the heads up.

danny069

knewbold wrote: »

ive got my test tomorrow, not happy about it.

i can reschedule but it goes against ec councils terms and conditions

I couldn't find why it goes against ec council's terms and conditions, I was able to reschedule without any hassle. I moved my date from Oct 24th to Nov 21st to give me enough time. I don't want to lose $600.

TechGuru80

There is a certain time frame before your scheduled exam that you get penalized. I cannot remember if it was 24 or 48 hours but it should have been clear when you registered for the exam. I do not remember if that is per EC-Council...I thought it was Pearson VUE.

knewbold

TechGuru80 wrote: »

There is a certain time frame before your scheduled exam that you get penalized. I cannot remember if it was 24 or 48 hours but it should have been clear when you registered for the exam. I do not remember if that is per EC-Council...I thought it was Pearson VUE.

it didn't mention it when rescheduling - you would have thought it would

SaSkiller

Wow, thats interesting. Adding a whole bunch of worthless stuff to the cert, great move ECC. (I don't mean its actually worthless, but it adds no significant value to the cert itself. Not much use of a pentester knowing hard drive failure costs, backup failure rates and too much risk management stuff.)

balcobulls

My test will be on the 27th of October. So what I am guessing, listing to all of you, they will probably make me help write the changeover. Well, we will see how crazy it is that close to V9. Go team...

Sch1sm

The exact same thing just happened to me except I just failed. I seen this thread and thought "oh, I'll just ignore that, it'll be fine." Then I seen the question about the cost of hard drive recovery and was just like "Welp, I'm ******."

I paid a training site for a course with videos by Dean Bushmiller and its own quizzes etc, I've watched CBT nuggets, I was getting over 90% in the boson practice exams (which are meant to be harder than the actual exam, lol) consistently for over a week, I got 52/55 in the AIO pre-assesment test and did the accompanying book of practice questions, I've read AIO and Symex and some of the official EC-Council textbook (which is awful, it's essentially a bunch of slides with piles of definitions just thrown at you) and I failed.

They still managed to **** up even the semi-relevant questions with vague answers or instead of asking you to interpret material they just want you to regurgitate their own awkward, twisted definition of a term.

DangerMan

Sorry to hear that Sch1sm. Yea the 2 official textbooks are gigantic and hard to read - just a crapload of Powerpoint slides basically. Did you get many risk management questions too?

cehv9

In the last 2 weeks, many people I know (all failed the exam) have reported seeing questions that were not covered in the CEHv8 course content. Initially I thought this might be because they might be related to V9. But I recently saw the V9 materials and went through it, and they have retained 95 percent of the V8 and only added cloud security module for the sake of it, They removed Buffer Overflow module. This isn't too much of a change. The OP says he saw questions on - hard drive failure costs, backup failure rates, and numerous questions on the Risk Management Framework (which is different from the risk triangle/risk analysis matrix) -

I did see a reference to hard drive failures in the Cloud module, however, I do not remember seeing about hard drive failure costs, and I swear to God, I have no clue where the questions on Risk Management Framework are coming from!

I think its a pity that for some reason, this cert is popular. I believe its just random copy paste of information found on the internet. Many a times the slides don't make any sense whatsoever. There is no clear flow of information throughout the slides, its just random. Its much better to invest time and money on something like OSCP instead of this crap.

shiffler24

I purchased the CEH course ware back in May which included a voucher for the exam. I raised the question about v8 and v9 to my point of contact at EC-Council and this was their response:

Hello Tyler,


CEHv8 hasn't been scheduled to retire yet. The exam title will change from v8 to v9 but the exam questions WILL NOT change. Same exam. We don't always change the exam when we change the training because the core content on which we test didn't change. It will take a core content change for the exam to change.


If you do not use the voucher before the CEHv8 exam is retired just email me. We will get it cleared and a v9 voucher issued.

danny069

How can it be a version 9 voucher when they dropped the version numbers?

shiffler24

Great question. I don't know exactly what they were referring to when they said that.

Sch1sm

You will be sitting version 9 of the test even if the exam title ends in v8

The EC-Council have updated their CEH website to v9 and it includes a "what's new in v9?" section. Questions from that section were in my v8 exam.

shiffler24

I see that now. I guess I got the run around especially if they are putting v9 questions in the v8 exam. My voucher is good until next June so I may just wait and see if additional curriculum is released for the newer version. I hate studying non stop for a test and thinking you know everything that is on the exam only to find stuff you didn't study on it...

Comptia threw a few questions I had no idea on for my Sec+, but was later told they don't count them towards your score.

IronmanX

I don't believe this has anything to do with CEH V8 or V9.

Myself and others had similar experiences back in the spring. I did my test in March.

What I wrote on here after my test:
"During the exam I thought i was going to fail. I ended up with 84%, but thought i was in deep trouble for most of the 2 1/2ish hours I was in the exam. It just was not what I expected it would be like from the material and practice tests I took. Most of the questions I was like Wow where was this in the material I covered. At one point i was so sure i was going to fail I was planning on how I could study the material I was being asked about for the next exam even though i had seen no mention of it in the CEH material I covered. I came to the conclusion during the exam that real life experience would be the only way to prepare for these questions."


I got PM's from others who felt the same way. Looks like people who are having similar experiences now are blaming the new V9 content, which his understandable. I don't know what to blame my experience in march on haha

My understanding on V9 "As noted elsewhere, v9 is not out. That's a marketing page. The earliest they'll have a v9 exam out there is next summer."

I see the near perfect scores and think wow how did they get such a high score with some many questions on my exam coming out of no where. (I also did the 5 days in person training, Matt Walker AIO + Practice Exams books, and 2 different video series)

cehv9

IronmanX wrote: »

My understanding on V9 "As noted elsewhere, v9 is not out. That's a marketing page. The earliest they'll have a v9 exam out there is next summer."

v9 is most definitely out. PS - I am a CEH trainer who has already completed 3 batches of v9!

danny069

Agreed, the v9 exam is already out even though they said nov. 1st

JDMurray

danny069 wrote: »

How can it be a version 9 voucher when they dropped the version numbers?

The CEH vouchers are "version neutral." The same EC-Council CEH voucher can be used for CEHv8 or v9 exam registration.

TK1799_st

I tested on FRI - 15 OCT 2015 - and was told after a miserable fail of 59% - that the update was pushed the day before nationally. I filled a complaint and a Incident Ticket was created. I signed up for the v8 exam on 25 SEPT 2015 - and was NEVER notified that the date of change over was approaching or even announced.

My receipt stated, as does my account order, 312-50 v8 - and therefore I am entitled to get the v8 exam and am demanding the Pearson Vie re-issue that exam and make a CLEAR determination of which one is being given - much like CompTIA does. For example, the SY0-301 is still good until the end of DEC 2015 - so one has a choice between 301 and the newly released 401. The Objectives i studied for were like 5 questions on the exam I took - the v9 Objectives were all over the exam and I had not prepared for them since they were not listed on the v8 Objectives. That is unfair and poor form on EC Council. Even if I get my money refunded - it's still 8 to 10 months of wasted time on part preparing, studying, testing tools, and research!!!

Unlike CompTIA - EC Council has NOT released the the new study material of courses/labs for CEH v9 - and one can only get the v8 study material. That in itself is fraudulent - or minimally unprofessional. I even viewed the webpage on 25 SEPT 2015 via Achieve.org (a footprinting tactic) - and states only the v8 - buy 5 OCT - the website was updated to show that CEHv9 has been launched - but one can only get v8 material in the iClass store.

I will post back to see what the answer will be - either full refund or they allow me to take the v8 exam as I paid for and studied the last 8 months on CEH v8 material and course work + books.

We will see....

JDMurray

I'm wondering if the new exam release was a accidental. There was a nine-month overlap with CEH v7 and v8. It makes no sense to release new exam items weeks (or months) before new exam study material is available.

danny069

Maybe it was accidental or not, but I suppose the company has the right to incorporate new topics anytime they want? The problem with that is, there aren't any materials on the new topics to study from, so a lot of people that have studied for months, purchased books, practice exams, (like me) feel like it is a slap in the face, and nobody wants to feel like that.

TechGuru80

Does anybody know the amount of questions that do not count towards a score? For example...if they took out 25 questions or whatever the case might be, those could easily thrown in those 25 questions without actually impacting a score. Without knowing that number it is very hard to make any legitimate claims. I compare this to when I took CCNA:Security...a new version was close to release but any significant inclusion of new topics made it very difficult to pass because the passing score is so high....on this exam the score is fairly reasonable and not expected to be "easy".

I personally did self-study (CBT and AIO) because I work in security and have several security based certifications and education. I took and passed the exam recently and this is what I will say...if you have spent several months studying for v8, and can afford to take a shot, I would before v9 "officially is released". Just because one person gets a lot of questions on something doesn't mean you will and assuming you pass, you will not have to worry about any other woes. Also remember that only so many questions will count so hopefully you are strong in the areas you get tested on.

JDMurray

If the fail rate for the CEH exam jumps significantly after 10/14/2015 then we can assume the exam items based on new topics are being scored.

TK1799_st

I'm thinking someone didn't pay attention to the "Change management" and pushed an update without confirming whether v8 was over written by v9 and I might be the first to call them on it since it only just occurred. Regardless, the exam I took on FRI was strong in v9 Objective that were just updated in the last week or so - and why they would expect testers to know that info - well, it's not right...I'll find out this week what, if anything they will do.

TK1799_st

Out of 125 questions - I would say 100 were very new topic driven with some Security+ and v8 knowledge splashed in there. I know CompTIA would threw in like 10 in addition to the 90 I got on my Security+ exam - no worries there because they said so at the beginning of the exam....but the 312-50 exam I took had a ton of new material in them that was directly tied to v9 Objectives now listed on the webpage.

cehv9

I have compared the v8 and v9 course ware and the change is very minimal. The change is not big enough to "fail" candidates. They have only included a new module "Cloud Security" and removed "Buffer Overflow". They have moved certain things around, but that's all that they have done! So, in theory even if you were to take the v9 exam on v8 material, you should still be able to pass, since the change was very very minimal. But even then, people are reportedly seeing questions they didn't study for. I can only include that EC-Council have screwed up the exam big time and have somehow included questions not covered anywhere in the course ware.