OSCP Attempt #2
For my second attempt, I scheduled it at 9:00pm at night. The reason I chose to start at night was because I knew I needed breaks in the middle and a good night’s rest would help me reset my mental model.
9:00 pm
Exam starts. I use Autorecon on the 4 other machines while working on the buffer overflow.
9:50 pm
Buffer overflow finished. Some scans for machines were still going. I decide to take on one of the 20 pointers next.
11:30 pm
20 pointer finished. I realized that the other 20 pointer was the same machine I had seen in my previous attempt and I already had low privileges on it before. So I decide to save it for last.
12:30 am
Found interesting hints with the 25 pointer but nowhere concrete. I decide to call it a night and go to sleep.
9:00 am
Wake up and came back. Decide I want to get the free low-user points for the 20 pointer machine I had seen from my first attempt. Finished the low-user shell on the 20 pointer and moved on to the 10 pointer machine.
11:00 am
Found a way into the 10 pointer. Tried it out and it seems promising.
12:00 pm
10 pointer done. At this point I have 25 (BOF) + 10 + 20 + 10 = 65 points. I also had done the labs and exercises for bonus points so I could pass with 70 points. However, I didn’t want to take any chances, so I kept on going at the 25 pointer.
3:00 pm
Found more interesting things for the 25 pointer. Still no shell.
6:00 pm
I decide to start writing my exam report. I retraced all my steps to make sure I had all the screenshots I needed.
8:45 pm
Exam finishes and I start writing my report.
Report writing
I took another 12 hours to write the report and submitted at 1pm the following day.
Result
My results came in 2 days after I submitted my report. I finally passed! That’s it for my journey through the OSCP. It was definitely a fun ride and I learned a lot about pen-testing!