My eWPTXv3 Exam Review

بسْمِ اللَّـهِ الرَّحْمَـٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

Hello everyone, In this article I’ll be reviewing and giving my own personal opinion on the eWPTXv3 exam from INE, I successfully passed the exam in 9 hours out of 18 with a score of 75%, in order to pass the exam you would need a score of at least 70%. The exam consists of 45 questions. You get your results immediately after submitting.

Taking this exam was special to me as this was my first certification/exam so I didn’t know what to expect. As for the course material comparing it with what I encountered in the exam, unfortunately I did not find the course material enough for someone to pass the exam, you would need to practice, study and solve labs on portswigger which can really help specially in the API and JWT sections, also having prior experience in bug bounty and pentesting in general can be really helpful.

Here are some tips that I can provide that will help:

1. Take your time, don’t panic. The exam is 18 hours and is more than enough for you to finish and answer all questions.
2. Document and take notes of everything in a well-structured way. Not taking any notes is really bad and can cause you to panic and answer questions incorrectly, specially in the later part of the exam as the amount of information can become really overwhelming.
3. Don’t underestimate the exam. The exam score doesn’t just rely on the questions you answer, it also relies on what you do in the lab and what you don’t do so make sure you check everything and do extra enumeration and demonstrate the exploitation of some vulnerabilities well.

Some important tools I used in the exam:

1. nmap, dirb, nikto, curl — for enumeration.
2. burpsuite/zap — for web application analysis.
3. sqlmap, hydra, metasploit — for exploitation.
4. hashcat, john — for post exploitation.

Important wordlists to use:

Login Forms/Credential Brute-Force, Hash Cracking:

1. rockyou.txt ■ Location: /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt
2. Unix_users.txt ■ Location /usr/share/metasploit-framework/data/wordlists/unix_users.txt
3. xato-net-10-million-passwords-100000.txt ■ Location: /usr/share/seclists/Passwords/xato-net-10-million-passwords-100000.txt
4. scraped-JWT-secrets.txt ■ Location: /usr/share/seclists/Passwords/scraped-JWT-secrets.txt

Directory/File Brute Force:

1. /usr/share/seclists/Discovery/Web-Content
2. /usr/share/wordlists/dirb/big.txt

How to prepare for the exam?

If you don’t have ANY experience in web app pentesting I would suggest you watch/study the content of the eWPT course as it can set a baseline for you to get ready to study for the eXtreme version.

1. Study the course material well and solve all it’s labs.
2. Practice on portswigger labs.
3. Solve Tryhackme rooms as well as hackthebox.
4. Read other reviews as it helped me in understanding what to expect from the exam.

The Pros & The Cons

Pros The course material is excellent — it’s well-structured, clearly taught, and you definitely feel that it delivers good value for the price. The exam itself is also a strong point: it doesn’t just test knowledge but pushes you to think critically and conduct your own research. Many of the questions aren’t straightforward, which mirrors real-world penetration testing and encourages you to think outside the box.

Cons That said, I found the older version of the exam to align more closely with real-world pentests. Previously, candidates were required to prepare and submit a full penetration test report, which added both realism and value — unfortunately, this requirement was removed in the current version. Additionally, while the lab/exam environment is functional, it could be improved. For the price point, it would be more efficient and professional to provide VPN-based access rather than relying solely on a preconfigured Kali system, which would likely offer a smoother and faster experience.

Yup that’s it, Thank you for reading, I wish you the best in your exam!