Course content: 18/18
Lab machines: 23.5/55
Days: 70/90
I managed to get through 2 lab machines this week, which is a little less than what I have done in usual weeks. However, there is a reason for this. I decided to go back through the course material, reading it through and completing some of the exercises I had missed or wasn’t able to do initially. After I felt the lab exercises were completed sufficiently, I then completed the optional lab report. This includes clear documentation of 10 lab machines and all the lab exercises, so it’s not a small task to complete this. I can see why so many past and current OSCP takers decide against completing their lab report, but I personally feel the effort was worth it. You also get 5 ‘bonus points’ as a head start to go towards your OSCP exam, which may well come in handy once the exam rolls around.
Weekly High:
The completed report is pretty impressive, if I say so myself. Mine is sitting pretty at just under 80 pages, and is a detailed report containing a lot of screenshots and accompanying captions or commentary. I put a lot of work into this report, and it was a great feeling to see it finally compiled and ready for submission.
Weekly Low:
I can distinctly recall a particular lab exercise being a ‘weekly low’ early on in this series, and it came back to haunt me this week. I spent days stuck on making a public exploit work as part of the lab exercises, but kept running into a range of different errors. Finally, I was able to make it work – albeit in ways I’m not sure were completely intended. I think the OSCP course materials could really use some updating, this module in particular. The only solace I could find is that the Student Forums are filled with people having similar difficulties, so at the very least I wasn’t alone in struggling my way through. I honestly think getting this lab exercise to work was harder than anything I’ve experienced in the labs, which is a bit bizarre when Offensive Security recommend students complete the lab exercises before starting to work on the labs.
—
I’ll be back on the lab machines from next week, hoping to creep closer toward that 30 mark. I’ve set 30 lab machines as a reasonable target for me to hit before my lab time ends, and I am confident I will be able to get there. I have a couple of weeks spare between my lab time ending and my exam date, so I also need to start thinking about how to make the best use of that time to prepare myself without access to the lab environment. At this stage I’m looking at a mixture of HackTheBox and IppSec’s YouTube guides.
Kento.
KentoSec 