I passed the CEH today, was supposed to take it last month but kept putting it off, I was spending more time with the Backtrack 4 book I got. I really did not care for version 6 and I wish I had more time and studied for version 7. Reason was things I knew "now" for Windows was not like it "then" for XP and 2000 Server.
I kept arguing with the study guides for the CEH, was using the EC-Council books WGU gave me for the class. A lot of the tools in the books were obsolete, I would go online and the stuff was abandoned years ago. So what I did was I focused on the penetration methodology, created an outline for myself and did some research on what are more up to date tools that are used. I figured there are probably a dozen different ways to do a pen test but there is a common method to do it.
I focused on nmap, wireshark, tcpdump, nessus. I wanted to use this study time to at least learn how to use some of the tools more efficiently, I used tcpdump a lot on Checkpoint for work but I only dabbled in it for troubleshooting connection issues.
If you have an IT background and Security I think you will spend way more time studying "what" all the tools EC Council throws at you do vs actually learning "how" to use all the tools. I did not care for the official books because it seemed like they just threw everything at you line after line, a dozen tools with just a couple of sentences on what they are used for.
I did download the material that EC Council has that is used for the labs and ran those on WinXP vmware.
And I also failed Microsoft's 70-642 today. Was a very, very, very stupid mistake on my part. I got the free voucher from Dreamspark a couple of months ago, somebody posted a thread on it. I wanted to use the voucher before it expired or I forgot I had it so I scheduled it "far enough" in the future so I could do the CEH first. Well remember how I pushed off the CEH for a month or so? Well I pushed it on to the same Saturday as the Microsoft test which I totally forgot about. I sat down for the CEH today and I see a Microsoft Survey on the screen....s o b what are the odds...I checked my CEH schedule on the Prometric site and I registered for 70-642 through VUE.
I kinda was studying for it but not a lot. So I figured I might as well tough it out. I failed got a 620 something but I spent most of the time focusing on topics the questions were covering so I could study for the retake. After I bombed the 70-642 I took the CEH afterwards. I was in there for almost five hours, stomach growling, bladder bursting. I was not used to taking bathroom breaks for certs except my CISSP exam but since I was the only one there they said I could get up as much as I wanted.
Going to take the 70-642 again in two weeks, focusing on labs until then.
