eCPPT: eLearnSecurity Certified Professional Penetration Tester — Review

I completed my eCPPTv2 exam, in July 2022, and received a reply on 1st August 2022, stating that i am now an eCPPTv2.

Background

eCPPT is offered by eLearnSecurity, which is part of the INE umbrella of companies. INE recently bought up Pentester Academy too.

Course

The Penetration Testing Professional (PTP) course is a beginner course for Penetration Testers and IT Security Professionals and ends with an exam and a certification (eCPPTv2). eLearnSecurity / INE designed the course for people with knowledge in IT, but on a basic level. If someone is not familiar with IT and Linux, then you can pick the Penetration Tester Student (PTS) first, to build a solid foundation.

The PTP course offers 6500+ slides, 17+ hours of video training material and 27 labs.

Exam

You can start the exam whenever you feel like it at the click of a couple of buttons, which is amazing. When you hit ‘Start Exam’, you are instantly given the scope for the test, the rules of engagement, and the reporting requirements. The lab environment is spun up, and you’re presented with your VPN configuration file to get connected.

Then you have one week to compromise the targets in scope, as well as another week to complete a professional report and upload it for an examiner review.

The scope is straightforward. The test is almost split into two parts; external and internal. The initial external infrastructure is a lot of fun. Once you’re inside the network, it’s up to you to compromise the visible infrastructure in scope, escalate privileges and report on any vulnerability you find.

Overall, the exam environment was very stable, and I experienced no issues with connectivity or similar.

Content

If you’re new to penetration testing, you’ll probably struggle with this exam. There is one task in particular that had me scratching my head for a while. I used a whiteboard for mind mappingpurposes throughout the exam.

During the external penetration test, you’ll encounter multiple vulnerabilities. In the end, I found three different ways to get a shell on the underlying system.

You’ll have to pivot to other domains and subnets and exploit the vulnerabilities present.

Reporting

My report was 81 pages long, with alot of screenshots, executive summary, report structure, contents page, etc. eLearnSecurity is clear on the reporting requirements. I made sure I explained every vulnerability I found, with screenshots and remediation steps.

Recommendations

• Take your time. Don’t underestimate the requirements of the exam, it’s not a CTF. You have seven days to compromise, plus another seven to report.
• Enumerate your targets carefully. Again, take your time here and Google if you are not sure.
• Report every vulnerability you encounter. Like a real-life engagement, you’ll want to inform your client of their technical debt and security posture. Even if it doesn’t lead to a root shell or even code execution, you’ll want to include it in your report.
• Take a lot of screenshots.
• I used Notion as a note-taking tool throughout the exam (It would be better for me to use OneNote as it was easier and time effective for the reporting phase).
• Don’t underestimate the post-exploitation phase.
• Ensure you know how to pivot. check this out: Explore Hidden Networks With Double Pivoting — Pentest Blog.
• Alongside your Kali VM, ensure you have a Windows VM to hand, with Immunity Debugger (with Mona script) installed and ready to go.
• Very detailed step-by-step instructions are required.

Best of luck if you are undertaking the exam!