Certified Ethical Hacker...

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From experience of working as a pen tester for a brief period I would say some of what Simon says rings true, apart from the reverse engineering of malware.

But that's just for pen testing, security is a massive area and totally depends on what you want to do. Yeah reverse engineering and coding is required for some roles, what is it in security you want to be doing?

With pen testing look at some of the bigger pen testing companies like NGS and have a look at their requirements for testers. They take people on as trainees and you're expected to have some knowledge nad be relatively proficiant at the basics of infrastructure and web app testing.

In the industry the CEH is seen a bit like an entry level cert, gets your foot in the door but the real certs places want you to have for testing are things like CREST and Tiger Scheme (although some companies aren't a fan of that), ultimately getting you to a CHECK team leader equiv cert (the advanced CREST exam gives you this).

So if being a pen tester is what you want to do brush up on your insfrastructure testing skills, host discovery and identification on network using tools such as nmap and other natty scripts and utilities, as well as your web application skills on things such as sql injection etc.

The Backtrack distro has a wealth of tools installed on it that will give you enough to do this sort of thing.

 

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They do it where I did my CCNA and VMware. I got in trouble mentioning them last time so I will PM. They charge £1300 which still seemed expensive compared to the 790 for VCP.

 

I haven't posted for a good while (18+ months, i think). However I've just finished the latest version of the CEH course; 7.1.

For me this is a stepping stone - I've no interest in becoming a hacker or Pentester; I'm honest enough to admit that my programming\scripting skills are not good enough. I am hoping to move across into a policy\audit InfoSec job; My certification plans for 2012\13 are thus; CISMP, CISM\A, CISSP. I consider it a distinct advantage to at least understand the methodologies and thinking behind offensive hacking.

My thoughts on the course; Well it's an OFFENSIVE course. It's not going to cover DEFENSIVE methodologies and how to secure and prevent attacks. I personally found a lot of the material was out of date and that of all the tools available you'll only really do any practical with the following; Cain & Abel, NMAP and Nessus. Incidentally my backgroud is in support but I've also worked in BAU Security so I at least have a grounding, if not mastery of teh subject matter. As has been stated before; If you do not have any kind of interest or security background you will struggle on this course.

As I mentioned at teh top of my post; I view the CEH as a stepping stone rather than a destination for me. IN that respect it's already opening doors for me in respects of mocing into InfoSec.

 

Out of interest did you self study it or pop on one of those week long courses offered by many training providers?

Finding myself with more time than I'd like free in my current job and was going to pickup a book and get this one out the way.

Have been a pen tester in the past for a brief period so it's not totally alien to me (and am CISSP etc).

Nmap and Nessus (or Qualys depending on if you've forked out the fortune it costs) were used a lot, Cane and Abel a little in certain situations but not a lot, and Wireshark too was used a fair bit. Also a tool such as Burp Suite is invaluable when it comes to webapp testing.

You generally didn't go round ARP poisoning when on a test if it was a live environment, but it was handy to use to pickup any network misconfiguration to see if stuff was being broadcast that really shouldn't be (especially in a situation noted below, which obviously didn't happen, honest ;) ).

I was allowed to 'play' on one of the countries largest banks new production online banking system just before it went live which had some interesting results ;)

Got this and the CISA on the list at the moment, and quite fancy Tigerscheme/CREST with the former being more likely as they run training courses.

Not wanting to derail the thread but had to leave that job which I loved due to personal/location reasons, in a far better location getting paid more but doing a job I'm a bit meh about at the moment. Still it's early days, and it's a rather large company so should be opportunity to get to where I'd like to be (sec architect).

 

Did some pre-reading and some mucking about on my home network with a BackTrack distro. Then went on a course (was part of a redundancy package from my last job). Was worth it - I didn;t have to pay and I passed an exam that was on my certification roadmap. So all good.

TBH, I do want to move away from a technical role now. I'm at an age where I'm finding it harder to pick up new tech and retain knowledge of it.

I did initally consider going down the Pentester route but I don;t think my technical skills are good enough so I've widened my scope a little.

 

Cheers, might grab the book I've seen and see how it goes. Don't think my new employer stick you on courses, they expect you to self study a lot (even though they have their own 'university' for training!) so will try that first.

Pen testing isn't all about the technical, although it's a big part, people/consultancy skills play a massive part as well if you are to be a good all rounder.

I've worked with child genius type people when testing, but they have no social skills at all, you couldn't sit them in with a client on an engagement meeting. But man could he find bugs in things ;)

My technical skills weren't top notch for pen testing, but was good in other areas.

End of the day I wanted to change jobs as was living away from home and wanted that to stop, had the choice of a global services co or a large well renowned pen testing company to go to and picked the former. Whether that was the right decision we will see (and don't think the other door is closed for me which is good).

Anyway enough of me derailing the thread with my uninteresting life, could talk about this for hours

 

Finding bugs is easy, writing lot complex code without bugs hard...

 

Whilst that is true in that writing the code with out bugs is harder, I wouldn't say finding bugs is easy at the level this chap was doing things. So much so that there was a bidding war for this guy when he was 16/17 between some major security consultancies to snag him.

 

"

Pen testing isn't all about the technical, although it's a big part, people/consultancy skills play a massive part as well if you are to be a good all rounder.

I've worked with child genius type people when testing, but they have no social skills at all, you couldn't sit them in with a client on an engagement meeting. But man could he find bugs in things ;)
"

Very true.

How many pen tester ring up your IT junior and try and convince them you are PAT testing at 11 and to let them in your super secure comms room. Proper pen tests should have a heavy social engineering side, but all too often it is just finding what ports are open on a few IPs. They should be trying to install key loggers and turn off the comms room A/C etc!

You need to be a con man, as well as a techi
You wouldn't know I recently did the CEH !!!!

 

And it's not also all about the test itself, you've got all the pre and post engagement meetings with clients/customers, you defintiely need to have some consulting skills to be a good all rounder in that world. You'll also likely move up to higher positions if you've got the consultancy skills on your side.

This is all from my experience though so anyone else might think different, but that was coming from the leading/largest testing co in the country who were after me a few months ago.

I'm by no means a hardcore techy, not what you'd expect from a pen tester, but I've got other skills/knowledge which are as important to things

Sadly not testing now in my new job but should get involved with it again, soon I hope

 

So work just signed me onto the CBT training for this, to compliment my CISSP. Do you have to attend an 'approved' course like VMware to be eligible for the exam?

 

Nope, from the EC Council site:

11. Can I purse self-study and attempt the exam instead of attending formal training?

The answer is yes. You must show 2 years of work experience in security related field. You must also submit CEH exam eligibility application and obtain authorization from EC-Council before you can attempt the exam. Please visit Certification for more details.

 

Very congrats Mattwest

Thanks for the sharing your study materials with us

I recently did V9 certification course from Koenig Solutions.

If you want to learn this course, I prefer this training center because it is one of the best-authorized training centers.

The bonus point is, the training center provides online training