My ejpt
Hello everyone! ~
I recently earned my first certification: the eJPT provided by INE. You can find all the notes I took during the challenges here. I passed it with a score of 91/100 in just 5 hours, compared to the 48 hours available.
I decided to go for this certification because I was already familiar with INE Security as a certifying body, and since I hadn't earned any certifications yet, I chose the most entry-level one in the field of penetration testing. I didn’t follow the course too closely since I already had some experience with boxes thanks to HackTheBox and TryHackMe, but from what I did see, it’s very well explained. There are plenty of exploitation examples and hands-on labs that you can use to practice what’s shown in the videos. I really enjoyed the CTFs included at the end of many modules, which let you test your knowledge in a practical way. The exam itself was easier than expected (in fact, I think the practice CTFs were more difficult than the exam).
Overall, about 33% of the questions had answers found in nmap output, around 67% were related to things you do with Metasploit or how to exploit a machine/website, and the remaining ones were flag or password-related questions. There are three types of questions: multiple choice, free-text (used for passwords), and locked free-text (used for flags). I have to say that in the first 30 minutes, I didn’t like how the questions were mixed and jumped from one machine to another. Later, I decided to focus on one machine at a time and answer only the questions related to that machine before moving on to the next. The network was made up of 5 or 6 servers, but only 3 of them provided actual services for penetration testing—the others were used for questions about ports and vulnerabilities.
To make sure you pass the eJPT, I recommend that beginners go through the entire course, complete all the CTFs, and practice on some easy machines from TryHackMe and HackTheBox (the latter are even harder than the ones on the eJPT). I also suggest studying how pivoting works, as there are a few questions on that topic.
Happy certifying! ~