So little bit about me
A final year Electrical Student in India. Took me 4 months to prepare for OSCP regularly 8–10 hours every day.
Pre-Exam Prep
I had already been doing HTB boxes previously but that was mostly trying to do HTB boxes in a horrible manner looking hints and doing just for sake of completing them! So 2month before start of PWK course, I decided to learn all the things of Windows and Linux systematically and made notes while doing so. I did around 10–20 active Windows boxes and 5–10 linux boxes to try to conquer my fear for Windows. Finally the day came when I got my PWK connection pack.
PWK
Got my connection pack and started by reading the pdf. It took me a week to make notes and read the pdf completely and properly. After than the 8th day I decided to jump in labs.
The lab experience was just soo good. I enjoyed doing them and was able to do 62/66 boxes in 29 days. (took help in some) . Those were the best practice I had and again I took notes extensively during Lab.
Post-PWK
I decided not to signup for Exam just after doing labs. I them bought the PG Practice and did around 24 boxes and again made extensive notes. After that I did some Tjnull boxes and took notes for them. Meanwhile I had scheduled the exam for 2nd Jan 2021. But this was a mistake, I was able to do most of stuff in a very short time than I had anticipated. Then I knew I will have to make sudden re-scheduling the exam date to a day or 2 days after. It took 1 day for me to finalize my methodology and upgrade my notes to a more systematic version and easy to find. Since my notes we literally 25 topics long and with many pages in each topic, re-organizing was very much needed.
Once I felt I was ready I shifted my exam from 2nd Jan 2021 to just 2 days after current day i.e 24 Dec 2020 and decided to give a go!
OSCP
Exam was supposed to start at 7:30 am in morning but there was a verification issue because of which I had to start my exam at 8:30 am. And to be cherry on top of cake, my laptop broke because of which I had to restart and setup everything again. So finally at 9:00 am I am set to go.
Within 40 mins I got the BOF machine since it was pretty easy. Then came the beast. I decided to attempt 25 ptr , heck that was difficult in start. After trying for 4–5 hours I could not get shell.I had enumerated soo much from existing vulnerability that I even knew the privesc once i had a shell but heck, I was not able to get shell.
I then decided to try another 20 ptr box and honestly this box was very very easy and I got the full 20 ptr in 20 mins. It was as if I knew how to do the box beforehand. My gut feeling helped me here and I got some confidence since I had 45 points under my belt in 6 hours.
I then tried another 20 pointer and hell that also was difficult for me since I could not get shell from my enumeration and knew how to privesc once I got shell.After trying for 4 hours I was nowhere and decided to try again the 25 ptr one since I just needed 25 points to pass. I tried harder on 25 pointer, literally trying everything possible and boom got the miss and solved the box in next 10 mins.
I had finally got the passing marks within 12 hrs of exam . Took all the screenshot and then out of interest I decided to at least look at 10 pointer box. After trying for 1–2 hours I was not able to get shell on 10 pointer even though I knew my exploit was correct. Decided to leave it and end the exam.
Report Making
I never imagined even in my wildest dream that I would actually reach stage of report making for OSCP in my first attempt. Carefully wrote the report and checked everything and submitted report just 4 hrs short of deadline.
Finally got the result on 27 Dec 2020 that I passed. Phew! Heck of journey but worth it!
Thanks
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