How I Passed the CNPen, And How You Can Too

A practical, honest guide to the Certified Network Pentester exam by The SecOps Group

If you are considering the Certified Network Pentester (CNPen) exam and you are not sure whether it is worth it, whether you are ready, or how to prepare , this post is for you. I am writing it fresh off passing the exam, and I want to give you the honest, practical review I wish I had found when I started preparing.

I came into this exam as a web application pentester. My network pentesting skills were, to be generous, underdeveloped. SMB enumeration, Active Directory attacks, Windows privilege escalation , I would have rated myself a 2–3 out of 5 in most of those areas. What followed was a focused preparation period, a mock exam, and then the real thing. This is everything I learned.

What is the CNPen?

The CNPen — Certified Network Pentester — is a practical, hands-on network penetration testing certification offered by The SecOps Group through their platform PentestingExams.com.

Detail Info Duration 4 hours 15 minutes Questions 15 flag-based questions Pass threshold 60% to pass / 75% for merit Format Live lab via VPN — real machines Tool restrictions None. Use whatever you want. Courseware required No. Syllabus only.

What sets CNPen apart is its philosophy. The SecOps Group does not sell you a course and then test you on it. They publish a syllabus, point you to free and paid resources, and let you figure out your own path to competence. Then they put you in a live network and see what you can do. It is refreshingly honest about what a certification should actually measure.

How It Compares to Other Certs

If you are weighing CNPen against other practical network pentesting certifications, here is an honest comparison:

The CNPen sits between eJPT and PNPT in difficulty. If you have already completed PNPT coursework, you are more than ready for CNPen. If you are coming from eJPT, expect a meaningful step up — but a manageable one with the right preparation.

The 4h15min format is also genuinely convenient compared to the multi-day gauntlets of other certifications. I took the exam after a normal day and did not feel like I had survived a 24-hour gauntlet.

The Curriculum — What You Need to Know

The SecOps Group publishes an official syllabus. Here is a breakdown of the key topic areas and what each one actually demands in practice:

1. OSINT & Passive Reconnaissance theHarvester, DNSRecon, crt.sh, Shodan, Google dorks, GitHub/GitLab leak hunting, certificate transparency. Important — the exam may include OSINT questions that require searching entirely outside the lab environment.

2. Network Scanning & Enumeration nmap (host discovery, service detection, NSE scripts, full port scans), banner grabbing, identifying services on non-standard ports. Always use -Pn. Always scan all 65535 ports on interesting hosts.

3. SMB & NetBIOS Enumeration smbclient, enum4linux, crackmapexec, null sessions, share enumeration, SMB vulnerability scanning (MS17–010 / EternalBlue). Always list shares before assuming access level.

4. Web Application Testing Directory enumeration (gobuster, feroxbuster), CMS fingerprinting, service exploitation, default credential testing, nikto. Web services running on the network are fair game.

5. Brute Forcing & Credential Attacks Hydra, crackmapexec spraying, hash identification and cracking (hashcat, John, crackstation.net). NTLM hash cracking. Password spraying against exposed services.

6. Active Directory Enumeration & Attacks BloodHound, rpcclient, ldapsearch, Kerberoasting (GetUserSPNs.py), AS-REP Roasting (GetNPUsers.py), Pass-the-Hash, DCSync (secretsdump).

7. Linux Privilege Escalation sudo -l, SUID binaries, cron jobs, writable paths, LinPEAS. GTFObins is your best reference here.

8. Windows Privilege Escalation whoami /priv, token impersonation, unquoted service paths, weak permissions, WinPEAS. SeImpersonatePrivilege is a common path.

9. Lateral Movement & Pivoting evil-winrm, PSExec, WMI, chisel + proxychains, SSH tunneling. Moving from one compromised host to reach internal network segments.

10. Docker Container Escape Checking for /.dockerenv, privileged container detection, exposed docker socket (/var/run/docker.sock), mounting the host filesystem.

11. Cloud Security (AWS) Instance metadata endpoint (169.254.169.254), IAM credential theft, AWS CLI enumeration (s3, iam, secretsmanager, ec2). Always try the metadata endpoint on any Linux cloud target.

12. Metasploit Framework Module search, exploit configuration, meterpreter post-exploitation, auxiliary scanners. No tool restrictions — Metasploit is fully allowed and should be in your arsenal.

Study Resources That Actually Helped

There is no official CNPen course. That is by design. Here is what I used and recommend:

TCM Security — Practical Ethical Hacking (PNPT Course) (Paid) The single most useful resource for CNPen preparation. Covers Active Directory attacks, network pentesting methodology, and Windows/Linux privilege escalation in depth. If you complete this course, you are CNPen-ready.

TryHackMe (Free tier available) Excellent for hands-on practice on individual topics. Work through rooms covering nmap, SMB, Active Directory, and privilege escalation. The Junior Penetration Tester path is a solid starting point.

HackTheBox (Free tier available) For more realistic machine practice. Focus on retired Windows and Linux machines that involve AD, SMB, and privilege escalation. Writeups are available for all retired machines.

freeosint.org (Free) Beginner OSINT modules that directly map to the CNPen OSINT section. Covers search operators, email harvesting, social OSINT and leak hunting. Do this before the exam.

OSCP Cheat Sheets & Online Docs (Free) Search GitHub and various blogs for OSCP methodology cheat sheets — they translate directly to CNPen preparation. Commands, escalation vectors, and enumeration checklists are all relevant.

YouTube (Free) IppSec (HackTheBox walkthroughs), TCM Security channel, and John Hammond’s videos cover the exact techniques tested on the exam. Watch while following along in your own lab.

How to Study — Tips From Experience

Build a methodology, not a memorised list of commands

The single biggest mindset shift that improved my preparation was moving from “learn commands” to “build a repeatable process.” On exam day, you will not remember a random command under pressure — you will remember a workflow. For every topic, ask: what do I run first, what do I look for, and what do I do with each finding?

Take the mock exam

The SecOps Group offers a CNPen mock exam. Take it. Do it under real conditions — timer running, no help, treat it like the real thing. The mock exposed gaps in my approach that no amount of reading would have caught. It also built the mental stamina needed to work through a multi-machine environment under time pressure.

Know your core tools deeply

You do not need to know every tool. You need to know a few tools extremely well. The ones that matter most:

• nmap — host discovery, service detection, NSE scripts. Know -Pn, -p-, --min-rate, and the SMB vuln scripts.
• smbclient & crackmapexec — share enumeration and lateral movement. Always list shares before assuming access.
• evil-winrm — Windows remote access with credentials or hashes.
• impacket suite — GetUserSPNs, GetNPUsers, secretsdump, psexec. Essential for AD attacks.
• crackstation.net — online hash cracking. Faster than local cracking on exam day for common hashes.
• chisel + proxychains — pivoting through compromised hosts to reach internal segments.

For OSINT — go beyond Google

The OSINT section can catch you off guard if you default to Google for everything. When Google returns nothing, the data is somewhere Google does not index well. Expand your search to Bing, Yandex, grep.app, intelx.io, GitHub Gist, GitLab, and direct certificate transparency via crt.sh. Sometimes the answer is a self-hosted Git instance at git.target.com that you find only by enumerating subdomains first.

Practise on real machines, not just theory

Reading about Kerberoasting is not the same as running GetUserSPNs.py and cracking a ticket. Every topic on the syllabus should be practised hands-on at least once before exam day. TryHackMe and HackTheBox both have free tiers that are more than sufficient.

Exam Day — What to Expect

1. Connect VPN first — verify lab access before starting the exam timer.
2. Use their provided Kali — they give you a dedicated Kali inside the target network. Use it for scanning and exploitation. Use your local machine only for OSINT and hash cracking.
3. Start with host discovery — nmap -sn on the full subnet. Know what is alive before doing anything else.
4. Always add -Pn — if a host appears down, it is almost certainly blocking ping probes.
5. Scan all ports — services are intentionally placed on non-standard ports. SSH may be on 222. SMB may not be on 445. Always run -p-.
6. Submit flags immediately — the moment you read a flag, submit it. Do not hold it while chasing the next one.
7. Set a rabbit hole timer — stuck for more than 15 minutes? Move on and come back. 60% is the pass threshold. You do not need everything.
8. The answer is often obvious — default credentials, version-specific CVEs, misconfigured services. Do not overcomplicate initial access.

Final Thoughts

The CNPen is one of the most honest certifications in the practical security space. It tests what you can actually do, not what you can memorise.

A special thank you to The SecOps Group for building a certification that is accessible in cost, realistic in format, and genuinely meaningful as a skills validation. No bloated courseware, no artificial restrictions , just a syllabus, a live lab, and your skills. That is exactly how certifications should work.

To anyone sitting on the fence — start before you feel ready. The gaps close faster than you think when you work with purpose.

AbdulAzeez Hibullahi Kolade — Certified Network Pentester (CNPen) · ISC² CC · Penetration Tester

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