CRTP Exam Experience

Certified Red Team Professional | Altered Security

Hi Amazing Hackers, This is Akchhat here with another Blog, Recently I picked up the CRTP course on 5th June with 30 days of on-demand lab access. Coming in with CRTA and AD-RTS already done, I had a reasonable baseline, but CRTP covers enough depth that I didn’t want to treat it as a formality.

The Course

Before touching the lab, I went through the Course video content. Nikhil Sir explains things in a way that builds actual understanding rather than just showing you what to run. The reasoning behind each technique is laid out clearly, and that matters more than most people give it credit for when you’re sitting in an exam environment without walkthrough videos to fall back on.

What also stood out is that Nikhil Sir covers OPSEC and its considerations throughout the course. That is an integral part of red teaming that most beginner-to-intermediate level courses just skip over, and having it woven into the content rather than treated as an optional extra is a big part of why I loved this course.

I watched the content four times total. Each pass surfaced something I had not fully absorbed the time before. I wouldn’t call that mandatory, but I would call it useful.

The Lab

I activated the lab on 21st June and ran through the environment eight times. That’s more than you need. Two or three focused runs with good notes is genuinely enough for most people. I kept going because repetition is how I get techniques to feel automatic rather than deliberate.

The lab is well structured. Each section builds on the last in a way that feels intentional, not arbitrary. The progression actually really mirrors how an actual engagement might unfold, which is what makes it feel like practice rather than a test.

One thing I genuinely enjoyed is that the attack host in CRTP is Windows. Most of my prior AD work had been from a Linux machine, so getting comfortable with PowerShell tooling, Defender evasion, and the Windows-native attack surface was a different kind of challenge. I found it interesting rather than frustrating, which probably says something about how well the course prepares you for it.

The Exam

I started the exam on 9th July at 10 AM IST and finished on 10th July at 1:30 AM IST, so around 15 hours in total.

The first machine stopped me cold. Local privilege escalation, something I had done repeatedly in the lab, just was not clicking in the exam environment. I spent more time there than I wanted to. Once I got through it, everything else came together cleanly. The rest of the chain unfolded in a way that felt like the preparation had worked, and I wrapped up the technical portion in around 8 to 9 hours.

If you get stuck early, the 24-hour window is there for a reason. Step back, think through your enumeration, and trust what you know.

Enumeration is genuinely the key for this exam. Not as a cliché, but in a very practical sense, if you know what you have, the attack path becomes obvious. What also matters is understanding the “why” behind each attack, not just the how. If you have gone through the course and actually internalized why each technique works the way it does, you will be in a good position. The exam does not throw curveballs at people who understood the material. It exposes people who memorised commands without understanding what those commands are doing.

One tool note worth mentioning: BloodHound is your best friend in this exam, but do not underestimate PowerView. People treat it as a backup option once BloodHound is set up, but it is damn helpful in its own right. There are things you can pull and cross-reference with PowerView that BloodHound either misses or does not present in a way that’s immediately actionable. Use both.

The Report

The report took me a full day. I submitted at 1:30 AM IST on 10th July, which is a slightly odd time to be hitting send on anything, but that is how it went.

This is the part people underestimate. It is not a log of commands. It needs to clearly communicate what you found, how the attack chain worked, and what the actual risk is. Proper screenshots, clean reproduction steps, structured findings. If you leave the reporting entirely until after the exam, you are making it harder on yourself. Document as you go.

Overall

I’d say CRTP was a fantastic experience and a lot of learnings for me. The course is dense in the right way, the labs are practical, and the exam actually tests whether you understood the material. I had a blast giving it.

For anyone preparing, I’d say watch the videos more than once, take notes you would actually want during the exam, and don’t treat the report as an afterthought.

My Verifiable link : https://www.credential.net/65a21627-871a-4c28-a0b7-5856e22c5941#acc.l85BPg6x

https://www.credential.net/65a21627-871a-4c28-a0b7-5856e22c5941#acc.l85BPg6x

More writeups on coming soon! Red team content on YouTube at http://youtube.com/@akchhat/ .