CEH and its Practical might take your nerves but here’s how you can clear it
In this article, I’d like to shed light on my exam experience and serve you with some of the best tools for helping to study and making your preparation journey more accessible and organized. Hence, you can ace the Certified Ethical Hacker (Practical) offered by EC Council.
Exam Information
Exam Title: Certified Ethical Hacker (Practical)
Number of Practical Challenges: 20
Duration: 6 hours
Availability: Aspen — iLabs
Test Format: iLabs Cyber Range
Passing Score: 70% (14/20)
Things to remember:
- The exam is proctored where you will need to have; Countable Internet Connection, Webcam, Microphone, Photo Identity Proof(To verify your identity)
- The exam will be on the iLabs environment, so it doesn’t require you to prepare your VM.
- There will be two attack boxes(Parrot OS & Windows Server 2016), and all the tools will be available on the machine.
- The exam is an open book. Hence, you are free to surf on google or refer to your notes. (Do not use the official document of EC-Council labs notes)
- During the exam, you are not allowed to talk. (Take Care with this: No electronic devices should be near your desk)
- Sorry you may not like this, but it is what it is; extended monitors are not allowed according to EC council terms and conditions.
- You can take one break of 15 minutes during the exam.
Preparation Timeline
Since I have experience working as a Cybersecurity Analyst and knowledge of the Cybersecurity Industry; however, I did not know the difficulty level. The EC council website provides iLabs activities which cover the obstacles that could emerge on tests based on the lab activities. If you have big money, you can pay iLab. Due to my limited financial resources, I used TryHackMe to practise using the tools on the list. How much you know about tools is the main focus of this exam.
Topics covered:
Network scanning to fetch the vulnerable machine.
Packet Sniffing
SQL Injection Attacks
Brute Forcing
Different types of Cryptographic attack
Tools:
Resource
Exam Day
My exam was scheduled for 1: 00 AM. I am not a night owl — -so I was a bit worried about whether I would not get sleep for the exam. Initially, proctored guided me with all the instructions; please make sure you have the GoTo meeting application downloaded to your computer. I started my exam around 1:25 AM. As I have already seen the YouTube playlist, I was aware of how iLabs work, but getting familiar with it took some time for me. Start by scanning the network with the Nmap tool. Also, don’t forget to examine all the ports. I highly recommend Hydra for brute-forcing the services. Gather all the details as Reconnaissance and enumeration are critical.
The easy part of the exam was Cryptography, as, during preparation, I gained insights into how the tools work. The question, which can take a bit of time, was related to Android hacking in the module of Mobile Phone Hacking.
While submitting the answers, make sure you write in the correct format and don’t misspell them because you won’t get marks if you make any such mistake. It took approximately 4 hours to complete the exam. Before submitting the exam, inform Proctored station (in vigilance) about it. Finally, while watching the sunrise from my desk, I clicked submit button.
Hurray! I successfully cleared my CEH Practical.
Now it’s your turn. I know you will Rock it!
Expected type of Questions:
What is the IP of the X machine?
How many windows machine are there?
What is the version of Linux Kernel?
Find Phone number of X user?
Find X file name which is tampered?
Decrypt the volume file using Veracrypt?
Calculate hash value?
Extract the SD card info from Android user?
Feel free to connect with me on @Linkedin will be more than available to be an active part of your journey. All the Best.
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