Hi everyone. I don’t think I officially started blogging about my OSCP journey. So, here, 15 days in and I am blogging while my latest PWK VM is being copied from C:/ to my NAS.
I have about 9 years of managerial cybersecurity experience under my belt, and as you can see from my earlier posts, I have been working for about 6 months getting prepped for my OSCP jump. I was working through Georgia Weidman’s Book, Penetration Testing: A Hands-On Introduction to Hacking, got frustrated at Cybrary for a hot one (some of the basic modules has flaws, not to mention my I would get kicked off the penetration testing pro track pretty much every week, and had to wait till Cybrary was back from the weekend to get sorted out). I thought about going back and doing my CE|H v10 but decided (thanks to my wife) that I should just go for the OSCP.
I was able to convince my work to flip the bill for 90 days of the lab and the materials, and whee! Here we go, into the rabbit hole. I have been scraping the web on people’s thoughts/preparation on the OSCP and shit myself in the process because this is a deep journey, and everyone is different, so I have to stop reading and just start moving.
Week 1: Got the monstrous course book, and the videos. Backed them up like three times since there is a fine for losing them and asking for them again. Worked verbatim through the videos, racking up some shell scripts and python on my PWK VM, and then realized that if I go through the book document all relevant exercises and pwn 10 machines, writing up a report, PDF it to Offensive Security, I would get 5 bonus points on my OSCP score. Some people say it’s not worth it, but I think it’s an awesome way to study and practice for the real deal, so I dropped doing the videos and started moving through the book.
Week 2: I am one slow man. I did manage to setup my PWK VM a bit better, realizing that terminator is the way to go, along with using OneNote to record my lab exercises and notes. I am three chapters out of 18 to go. I have a strange feeling that I will be asking for more lab time.
So, today I mounted an empty folder over my root folder in my PWK VM image today. I am not smart man. I can’t stress how glad I was for using OneNote online to backup my notes and exercises. Backup, backup, backup. The VMWare tools aren’t really working (at the moment) with the PWK VM, but after I messed everything up, I followed this chap’s thoughts on bridging a folder between the VM and the host, with the host folder backing up to the cloud. I chose OneDrive since my my OneNote online notebook for my notes and exercises were going there and the Surface Laptop I am using is so friggen integrated with OneDrive, I get that folder structure on my laptop mixed up with the simple core folders I have locally all the time. Moving forward, I see no reason not to back up my entire VM when I make changes to it.
Currently 6pm on 12/29/2018. I aim to get through a good portion of chapter 4 tomorrow. Remember, it’s an OSCP journey. I am so passionate about this stuff, and with time, I think I can rock this. I just need to be smart, and honestly, move a bit faster.