Ok, let’s address the elephant in the room to start. After my last post, I went HAM on studying for the OSCP since I had a month left to go. Went out of town for the holiday weekend in July. Still got at least a couple of hours studying each day while we were out of town.
Also, I moved in the middle of studying. I pretty much left my desk and computer at the apt to continue studying and take the test in that environment. It was tried and tested, and the internet connection was solid. Which is required when taking a certification test remotely these days.
I know the material. I put in the hours. I made sacrifcies. I STILL failed the OSCP.
Here’s what I didn’t do.
I didn’t do every SINGLE exercise. The rational was mainly time spend. Sometimes you have to repeat yourself in a new env, new box, to get to where you were in the last exercise. My logic was I can reproduce and test on my machines to grasp the concepts. Why repeat yourself? Why? Because there’s a cyclical nature to pentesting and the stages in the methodology.
I didn’t spend enough time strategizing. Yes, I know the TTPs and attack vectors covered in the material but you have to chain them together in different scenarios. I should’ve spent more time drafting up specific scenarios.
To quote Sun Tzu: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”.
Two days after the exam, I took off to hacker summer camp in Las Vegas. I attended BlackHat training, the conference, dropped in at bsides. Then went to Defcon and again took some training to top it all off. It was the longest amount of time I’ve spent in Las Vegas.
Came back and got to work. Had to get some progress on my work projects.
Finished moving to the new place.
Started school. I’m taking an ML/AI certificate course.
Between school and learning NextJS/React – I’ve been pretty busy.
Will I take another shot at it? Probably.
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