My OSCP/OSCE experience
As requested, I've written a post in English about Offensive Security Certified Professional/ Expert without disclosing any details. The only topic here: "time management".
I fully respect this company since the day I came across the post below and never respond to any technical questions about the exam.
https://www.offensive-security.com/offsec/what-it-means-to-be-oscp/
OSCP exam
OSCP exam is very hard because of the 24h time limitation.
Technically, You're ready to take the exam if you've completed PWK lab and comfortable with hacking machines (easy to medium boxes) in "Hack The Box" without any hints. Even if you're not now, you'll be confident in the end as long as you go extra miles and do your homework diligently.
So now, you believe in yourself. Great. You can hack away any machines in front of you. Cool. Your Cherrytree (or Keepnote, or Onenote, whatever) must be filled with practical knowledge. Super nice. What about the time frame?
24 hours: What's your plan?
muts says at the very beginning of the video
"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax."
In retrospect, I think I misunderstood this message. I was thinking he's saying "beef up your technical (mainly enumeration ) skills then you'll pass the exam". (maybe correct)
In my personal view, he might be asking " Can you make a proper exit plan in any desperate situations and drop any false hopes within the allotted time frame? "
Meaning, what if your ax turned out to be complete garbage after 4 hours hardwork? What if you've been shaping the wrong part and realized that after 4 hours? Can you still fight back?
My experience
I kept 4 hours for a nap, the rest is 4 hours each. No obvious metasploitable vulns. Panic set in. Rage quit. Failed. Tried hard. Made silly assumptions. Failed again. Tried harder. Got tunnel vision and couldn't get out of the rabbit hole. Scanned multiple times with hoping something missing pops up. Failed again miserably. On the 4th attempt, boooom, I could pass. (Obviously, I'm not a l33t)
OSCE
I don't think I need to explain what OSCE is. There are many nice posts on how to prepare for this course. (In Japanese, maybe my previous post is the first one. yay!)
Some guys say that the course is outdated (and yeah, right), but I don't think it's a problem. Have you ever read "The Art of War"? What do you think if one of your friends says "The book is outdated". Ah, yeah, she's absolutely correct. But is that the only point?
Anyway, never skip exercises in the course PDF. Do SLAE.
Download at least 10 exploits from Exploit-DB. Fuzz and write your own exploits.
My experience
I was totally scared. There are many horror stories on the Internet. I had a very hard time for the OSCP exam. The nightmare again?
As soon as the VPN package arrived, I started digging in. Wait! I think I can manage this challenge. Hooley! Root!
Within 20 hours, I could compromise 2 hosts (both are the highest points). I was very happy because I could defeat super saiyans. Took a nap.
After 4 hours, I woke up. Took a bath with my baby son. Started looking into the low point machines.
Nothing worked! Seriously, nothing! It took 20 hours straight to manage these hosts. Struggled for 44 hours.Finally, full points! After double-checking my exploits and screenshots, I went to bed.
Conclusions
After taking 2 certs from Offsec, I started to be able to see the big picture behind cyber attacks. Highly recommend not only for red teamers but for blue teamers.
