Passed CEH on 7/15

emcconnell

Thanks everyone for all of your helpful post!

My Background:
I am 29 years old with a M.S. in Computer Science. I have worked most of my career as a game programmer or game designer. I have zero security or IT experience, and posses no certifications. About a year ago I decided to learn about hacking. I was listing to "This Week in Tech" and heard that itpro.tv was starting a CEH course and decided to use that as a milestone marker.

Study Materials:
- itpro.tv (feat. Sean Oriyano) - watched twice, took notes the second time as if I was in a college course
- offical course slides - took notes while plowing through these as well
- skillset.com - I used the free version and got up to 63% (3472 questions)
- Kali Linux - I got permission from various friends to mock pentest their websites or network games

Having a very strong programming background, things like SQL injection came extremely easily. Other things like Risk Assessment and Security+ related stuff were much harder to memorize.

Application:
Since I posses no security experience I had to pay $100 to apply for the test. I was currently working as a technical designer in multiplayer at a very large AAA game company. One of my programming responsibilities was "in game real money purchases", so I could leverage anti-hacking as my reasoning for the certification. The application process was painless.

The Test:
The test was both very easy and very hard. At its core it is just a 125 question, multiple choice exam. The difficulty comes in the sheer amount of material that is covered and fair game for questions. There were a few questions that clearly had spelling errors and maybe two questions I wondered if the test was trying to trick me.

Tips;
kirlab made a post giving a great breakdown of the exam. Although my exam didn't quite follow his question breakdown, the post will give you a good idea of what to expect.
Use the bathroom before you start the exam, you cannot leave the webcam during the exam.
Be confident. I found second guessing myself lead to more incorrect answers during my skillset practice.