eCXD Certification — 20 Tips for Busy Newbies
My journey to eLearnSecurity certified eXploit Developer
Background
After passing my eJPT exam, I was curious about binary exploitation and reverse engineering. I wanted to understand what a binary does without knowing its source code. With zero ideas about where to begin my journey, I started exploring and researching online. I ended up finalizing on eCXD certification(mostly because of the quality of courses from elearnSecurity).
In this blog, I will NOT explain the eCXD course content as the other blogs do an excellent job there. Instead, will share list of ~20 tips that worked best for me
Managing full-time work, family, and ethical hacking
I have two kids and my day job keeps me pretty busy, so available time was limited on my side. A week after my eJPT exam, I signed up for this course. Due to severe time shortage (given my work and family commitments with two young kids), here’s the disciplined approach that helped me:
- Set aside early mornings/late nights to study, spending 1 hour/weekday and 8 hours/weekend
- I would use any time available to study (lunch breaks, feeding/bathing my toddler).
Who should take this course
I am no expert in this field and a total newbie in the security field too, my only suggestion would be to try out the free module that elearnSecurity provides for this course and see if it interests you.
This course IMHO is for people who like to get their hands dirty with low-level code (mostly assembly). A basic understanding of assembly code will surely make this course go way easier.
👉🏽 Tips to prep before you get started
To get the maximum buck for your time investment, make sure you have:
- Understanding of Linux+Windows commands (+ its internals)
- Understanding of gdb debugger (optional)
- High-level understanding of assembly code (would highly recommend this course https://www.pentesteracademy.com/course?id=3)
- Basic Python skills
👉🏽 Tips to cover course material when you are short on time
The course material is brilliant! You have everything that you need in a single place. Some of the chapters, however, are too long (specifically Module 2: Linux Exploit Countermeasures & Bypasses), but that is because this chapter explains different countermeasures and bypasses in a single place.
Here are some techniques that worked for me to cover course material quickly:
- Have a completion plan — Set a date to complete this course. With my kids and work, this plan changed several times and I kept recalibrating my plan accordingly. It took me 1.5 months to complete course+labs
- I took the 60-hour lab package and ended up using around 40 hours or so.
- Go through the module at a high-level in a fast-paced manner and try understanding the gist of that module instead of diving deep into a module
- After finishing the above👆🏼, jump to the related labs
- After completing each lab, jump back to the theory and now complete it thoroughly, which also helps you relate with the labs. Rinse and repeat for different modules
- Mix the Linux and Windows exploitation modules for study, to ensure that you stay sharp 🤜🏽
- Solve examples in the theory slides and pay attention to minor details
- Buy VMware Fusion (if on Mac) or VMware workstation and get a pro license, it’s totally worth it as its performance is awesome (much much faster)
- Elearnsecurity has an awesome forum, don’t be hesitant to ask any questions (if not already asked), there are a lot of friendly folks there
- Have two sets of notes (one detailed one) and one like a cheatsheet, the cheatsheet would be extremely handy for the exams
- Keep your scripts handy as you try the labs
- I was not well versed with Windows development, so I spent more time on that, but it might be different for everyone
- Take a lot of breaks and sleep well.
👉🏽Tips for the D-day
The exam was fairly challenging. You are given 3 days for the practicals and two days to write the report. The exam is fully practical like what one would see in the real world (not a CTF as such).
It is a mix of 32/64 bit Windows/Linux exploits. There should not be anything outside of what is taught in the course which comes in the exam, just make sure to pay attention to all the details.
Here are some tips for the exam:
- Carefully read the questions and understand them thoroughly before starting
- Have all your cheatsheet notes ready
- Take frequent breaks (this is the time when you will say “Eureka” and get the answers/alternate solutions)
- If possible keep your scripts ready which you can re-use for the exam to save yourself time
- The exam tests your patience, so keep your cool and slowly solutions will work out
- Don’t try to create fancy reporting using latex and other tools( like OSCP), the goal of the report is more to explain clearly all the steps followed during the exam
- Last but not the least, try to enjoy the exam
Special Thanks
Would like to thank @eLearnSecurity for creating such an awesome course. Also, thanks to these course reviews and channels that inspired me to take this course:
