I started the OSCP (PWB) course back in July with 90 days of lab time. I’m now down to less than 30 and while that still may seem a lot, when you minus work/sleep/family time from it, it starts to bring on a mild sense of panic.

Don’t get me wrong I’ve already achieved my own personal goal for the course, when I started the course my goal was to get all the machines in the main lab network, last night I completed that goal (bye bye Sufference). On top of that I’ve also got into 2 of the other networks and only have a couple of machines left in each. That just leaves the last network (and the hardest) if I can get a foothold into there then I will be happy (well I’m already happy but you know what I mean).

If I had to list everything I learnt it would be a very very long list, equally as long for all the things I still need to learn but learning isn’t a chore when you enjoy it. Take last night for example, I struggle with the Linux machines in the lab (16 years as a Windows sysadmin) and one of the other students on the course gave me a crash course in Linux setuid and setgid permissions (basic stuff right) but it’s not something I know and now I understand it a bit better, a bit more googling and Linux servers seem a little less scary.

I know, you’re thinking wasn’t your last OSCP post about “being alone…”, well yes, but that was more about how the course can seem overwhelming and not everyone takes the time to help out other students. I try to help others out when I can and it’s nice to have a few people to talk to when you are online for hours at a time.

All being well I will take the OSCP exam at the end of October, I’m hoping to give myself a week between finishing in the labs and taking the exam to cram up on some of my areas of weakness and give myself a bit of a break. Oh I’ve still got the dreaded lab report to write (that seems more scary than the exam).

I’ve even got some more studying planned for after the OSCP course, I’m going to take SecurityTube.net “Python Scripting Expert” course (and exam). I suck at coding and I like python (sorry Ruby lovers) so that will be a good thing for me. Then after that who knows, maybe think of a project to start who look at researching something.. no idea at the moment.. 🙂