Offensive Security Certified Professional

In what I categorize as my biggest win yet in my career, I passed the OSCP on my first attempt with 70 points. I took the “hard” route and managed to knock out the three standalone boxes in about 11 hours. The biggest takeaways I had were these:

• Not everyone’s truths are your truths, meaning, people will say dont use autorecon [or insert tool name here], dont do x, do y instead. Dont take these as fact, learn your methodology, not someone elses.
• Read your reports entirely. Dont jump in as soon as nmap starts spitting back a response, wait and make sure you have the whole picture.
• Relax, yeah its a difficult test, but you have time. I once read this test was designed to be completed in 12 hours, and I agree with that.
• Put yourself in the best position to pass the test before starting. Do the exersizes, they greatly change the calculus for passing and that 10 points goes a long way in making you nimble during your test.
• It doesnt matter how many times you take the test, so long as you pass. I had heard of people failing this test 5 and 6 times. Who cares, at the end of the day your letterhead still says “OSCP” when you pass.

Over all this experience was by far the best training exprience I have ever taken. People give Offsec a hard time because of their try harder mentality, but I really embraced it and enjoyed (almost) every minute of it. From the first reverse shell all the way to the big three in the lab, I had a great time.