My eJPT Experience
What is the eJPT?
The eLearnSecurity Junior Penetration Tester is a certificate that proves you have what it takes to be an entry level pen tester. It is a hands-on, practical assessment of an individuals pen testing and information security skills. Also, the cert looks very pretty :)
My background
Disclaimer: I have a technical background. I minored in computer science in university, program in my free time, and did TryHackMe and Capture The Flag (CTF) challenges for several months before discovering INE and the eJPT.
That said, I think a less experienced person could still ace this exam with a few months of preparation.
My preparation
My main preparation source for the exam was INE’s free Penetration Testing Student (PTS) course. This wonderfully crafted cource covered that fundamental
knowledge that every pen tester should know.
For anyone interested in the eJPT certificate, I would highly recommend taking the free PTS course. For those already who are more experienced, I’d recommend skimming it and completing the provided practice labs.
In addition to the PTS, I also did some TryHackMe rooms and CTF challenges. Oh, and watched a lot of John Hammond videos. However, this was more for fun and not directly related to my exam prep. I think the provided practice labs, especially the “Black Box” pen testing labs, are sufficient. If you need further practice with a given tool I’d recommend TryHackMe.
The last thing I did to prep was make myself a cheatsheet of commands and notes notes from the PTS course.
My exam experience
I rose out of bed Saturday morning and ate a big breakfast. I reviewed my notes one more time, gave myself a little motivational speech, and started the exam at noon.
You can answer the test questions in any order, but one one question is displayed at a time. So I copy-pasted all the questions into a text document so I could see everything laid out before me. This made it a lot easier to answer the questions as I performed the pen test.
About three hours into the exam, I had answered at least 15 questions. Tempted to say, “YOLO” and submit right then and there, I decided not to. So instead I took a snack break and spent some time away from the computer.
Once I returned, I reviewed my notes and was able to break into the final box. From there, I answered the remaining few questions and submitted my results. In total it took me about 4.5 hours (including short breaks) to complete everything. I passed with an 18/20.
Tips
- Don’t force yourself to do everything in one sitting
- Take notes during the exam
- Make your own cheatsheet or reference mine
- Copy the test questions into a separate text document for easier access
Closing thoughts
Overall, I was impressed with how official the entire experience was - I’m more use to the game-like vibe of CTF competitions. It really felt like I was performing an actual pen test on an organization’s network! I had a lot of fun taking the exam and would recommend it to anyone looking to get into pen testing!
~ Happy hacking