It’s been almost one year since I got my OSCP and I never got the chance to write about it. And since almost everyone does a general review about the Offensive Security Certified Professional certification, I decided to do a short write-up about the actual skill requirements for hacking through the OSCP labs and obtaining the OSCP certification.
So what do you need to know prior to starting the OSCP?
- general OS internals knowledge (Linux, Windows) – have you ever installed Linux/Win? Know what a partition is? What is a log and where to find it?
- general networking knowledge (what is a IP subnet, netmask, gateway, how are packets routed)
- troubleshooting skills
- using a search engine with advanced parameters (filetype, site, inurl, etc)
- what is ARP, a firewall, antivirus
- can you navigate/list/check or change permissions of files with cmd/bash?
- can you read simple code (BASH, Python, Powershell) scripts?
- can you write 2 liner scripts in linux?
- Do you know what this does?
for ip in $(seq 1 254);do ping -c 1 192.168.1.$ip | grep “bytes from”; done
Missing some of the above? You can catch up, it’s not rocket science.
What is not mandatory, but great to have?
- any kind of programming/scripting experience
- any kind of experience in the IT Security field
- experience as a sysadmin, tech support engineer or similar background.
Did OSCP help me with finding a job in IT Security?
- YES!!
Are you ready for Pain & Sufferance? Brace for impact and register for OSCP. You will bleed, but it will change the way you look at IT Security and Pentesting.
Over and out – OS18010
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