4 Days In

Yep thats all it took. 4 days in and i broke my machine somehow..... busy backing it up atm, so I thought it would be a good time to give an overview of my thoughts on this course.

So far its been an amazing course. I know im going to be reflecting the thoughts of others here but even if I don't pass, the amount of info and the clarity of its presentation is simply top notch for the most part (a few videos went a bit fast for me, but so far its only been 1-2)

Futhermore the extra mile challenges are, well, actually quite a challenge. So far i have done all of them except for the DNS extra mile challenge, which i skipped because i was too tired to do it then...will have to come back to that one.

As for the actual exploiting part, i managed to get a few boxes on the first day, followed by 1-2 a day on Monday and Tuesday. From there its kinda stopped, and i know have about 6 boxes so far. The total number of boxes in the lab is about 45 or so, so i still have a long way to go.

One of the most interesting things about this course though is that although they don't tell you how to exploit any of the machines, they do give you some help by walking you though how to do different enumeration techniques in the videos, and then ask you to perform these on the labs. This makes for a very enjoyable experience as you get to learn how Mutts would go about doing it, and then your given the opportunity to recreate that in the lab, both learning the skills and gaining knowledge that you will need for later pentests.

Now one of the many things that is asked when taking this course is how much programming language that you need. From my personal experience, walking into this course I had known some programming from my exploit development and Grey Hat Python book, but i had no experience in Bash whatsoever. Personally speaking, I do think you need a bit of programming knowledge to understand some sections reguarding Python if you don't want to get caught up and have to look everything up, but then again you could enter this course without any experience in it; it just might hinder your progress a little bit.

As for the bash side, if you don't know it don't worry. So long as you know how to move around and do basic things in Linux, you will be fine. Honestly I didn't know how the cut command worked at all, and Muts provided one of the best examples of it, and know I love it. /being lame comment Bash has sort of become my new best friend in a way /end lame comment

Overall, very very good course. Unfortunetly I can't say much more as im only beginning module 6 + I don't want to spoil the course for you guys who might be considering taking it.


Now im going to go fix this dang pc...........raaaaaagh.....i think i might also have some cookies with that ;)

-tekwizz123 (*munch*)