After completing The Cyber Mentor’s Zero to Hero Pentesting Course on Youtube, I decided to take his advice and sign up for the PTS.
The course has 15 modules: Introduction, Networking, Web Applications, Penetration Testing, Introduction to Programming, C++, Python, Command Line Scripting, Information Gathering, Footprinting & Scanning, Vulnerability Assessment, Web Attacks, System Attacks, Network Attacks and Next Steps.
I spent a lot of time on the course
I’m not ashamed to say that I spent around 4 months on the course. I’ve heard others brag that they knocked it out in a couple weeks. And I’m sure that is possible with prior experience. I could have ran through it quicker as well, but I really wanted to take time with labs and have a solid understanding of all the material before moving on. Another reason why it took me a long time is that I was backpacking throughout Ecuador and Peru. Side note; gorgeous countries!
If you’re already experienced with the basics, you might want to skip ahead to the PTP
Part of the course is very basic. The first sections are similar to some parts of Network+. For example, these early portions cover things like OSI model, TCP/IP protocols, routing, web requests and more. Even though I felt very comfortable with these basics, I decided to study these sections and take notes because I wanted to make sure that my knowledge in the basics was solid. Much of this was similar to my studying of the Network+ course.
One of the labs called “Find the Secret Server” in the Networking portion, involved setting up a manual route in that allowed us to access another network. Another fun lab in this chapter tasked us with exfiltrating data from a victims network by hiding our loot in small DNS traffic packets.
The Programming sections were invaluable
The C++ and Python sections were some of my favorites. I have been trying to learn Python off and on for a few years and this additional exposure was definitely a good experience. However, I’d barely used C or C++ before and learning more about this language was invaluable. I learned later on when taking the PTP that this experience was helpful for compiling exploits or tools.
The course also covers a bit of bash scripting which is also great. Learning things like this early on will certainly help with taking the OSCP and setting a solid foundation in the basics.
Some of the labs expect you to write entire scripts and compiled programs from scratch and if you’re a beginner. I felt like this was a bit difficult for beginners.
Frustrations with some labs
The labs don’t always work. So sometimes I had to peek at the solutions. For example in one lab, regarding DNS exfiltration, the lab instructs you to modify the DNS address to point back to the attacker machine. The reason being is that they cannot replicate this type of attack within their virtualized environment. Things like this are a bit annoying as the instructions don’t let you know about this. So after trying for a few hours to get this lab to work, you realize there was basically no way you could know this.
I saw a few people complaining about things like this in the student forums. And I agree that it is slightly frustrating, but in the end we’re suppose to be hackers. We need to find solutions and overcome obstacles. In the real world things will not always work on the first try so we must stay vigilant, persistent and troubleshoot to overcome obstacles.
Favorite labs
My favorite sections included the web exploitation attacks like SQL injection, XSS, session hijacking, cookies, directory traversal and remote and local file inclusion.
The XSS lab was fun. You actually have to wait for someone to log back into the site and visit the page that you’ve injected XSS with and then steal the session cookie. Of course it’s not a real person, but it’s a cool way to learn how XSS attacks work. From what I’ve experienced, I haven’t seen these on popular CTF platforms.
I enjoyed learning the basics of Burp Suite, Zap, SQLmap and other web exploitation tools. Other favorite labs: Finding the secret server and data exfiltration.
The Hera lab system seems to work pretty well. The course UI and panel works great. Also having each module as a pdf is helpful. I will probably combine all the pdfs into one so that I can easily search through it if needed in the future. The videos are really helpful as well.
I’d recommend getting the Elite package which comes with extra videos and 3 Blackbox labs that each have entire networks of machines that you are tasked with pentesting.