My Best Tips and Advice for the eWPTX Exam — CJ007

Hi folks!

CJ007 · 2024-10-12 08:55 · 0 claps · 4.5 min read

#ewptxv2 #ewpt #penetration-testing #ewptx #black-box

eWPTX — My Best Tips and Advice (CJ007)

Hi folks!

I recently passed the Web Application Penetration Tester eXtreme (WAPTX) certification.

For those who don’t know, the WAPTX/eWPTX is the most challenging web application pentesting certification offered by INE Security currently. It provides a real-world environment (not CTF-like) consisting of multiple machines, with 7 days of lab access for testing and an additional 7 days for report writing. This certification is also globally recognized and highly respected in the cybersecurity field.

My Exam Journey w/ Advice

Actually, this was my first professional cybersecurity certification I took. I purchased the INE Security Premium subscription for 499 USD during last year’s Black Friday Promo in 2023, which included a 6-month voucher for the certification and full access to all learning materials. At that time, I was in my 4th year as a BS Computer Science student and working as a penetration tester at a multinational company. I chose not to use my first voucher, as I wanted to focus on completing my college requirements and dedicate more time to deeply understanding the course materials. A few months later, I redeemed the voucher again, gathering the courage to take the exam despite feeling nervous, as it was both my first certification and one of the most challenging offered by INE. ( ꩜ ᯅ ꩜;)⁭

First day — As I began the exam, I set up first some important notices and instructions for the environment. After a few minutes, all the applications became accessible, and then I began the reconnaissance phase focusing only on one application and then moved to another when I was confident enough in what I had found utilizing tools (esp., nmap, dirb, gobuster) and wordlists (Note: I always restart my local machine whenever it’s starts to get slow). While waiting for the results, I tried to document some low-hanging fruits or some easy vulnerabilities to avoid wasting any time.

Second day —On that day, I felt disappointed and very doubtful about myself, as I didn’t meet any exam objectives. That’s why I tried to review my pentesting methodologies and compare them to others to identify which sections needed improvement. I also went over my notes repeatedly to see if I missed something important during the test.

Third day — This day, I solved almost a one-third of the exam objectives. I did some drawings and chartings to organize my attack surface connecting also some important notes/ideas.

Fourth day —I meet almost the 80% of the exam objectives. I tried some privilege escalation approaches to leverage some medium vulnerabilities. I also used python scripts to automate some of my attacks (Note: programming skill is a must).

Fifth day — On this day, I solved all the exam objectives. However, I tried to focus on bypassing WAFs. Actually, this caused me a lot of hard-time of trial-and-error and thorough observation on its defense behavior (Note: DO NOT take the exam if you can’t create your own custom tamper scripts in SQLMAP :>). For me, bypassing the WAFs using XSS attacks are not that hard compared to SQLi. (¬_¬”)

Seventh day —I’m confident in my POCs. (๑>◡<๑)

8th-to-12th day — I created and refined my report. After that, I submitted it.

After a few days — I passed!!

Topics Covered

SQL Injection w/ WAF
Cross-Site Scripting w/ WAF Bypass
Insecure Deserialization
XXE Attacks
Cryptography
Cross-Site Request Forgery
HTML5
Authentication
LDAP

Recommendations (Before taking the Exam)

Be Good at Report Writing — If you’re starting in this field, please expect that you need to become expert in creating Professional Pentest Report (Bruh, this is for an expert level). You can look for many publicly available templates or create your own format combining those important sections. You must know how to use CVSS Calculator (preferrably version 3.1+). Furthermore, you must make sure that the recommended remediations per vulnerability is clearly understandable and very specific to details.
WAF Bypass — As I said in my exam journey, this exam measures your capacity to evade some real-world security defenses in order to successfully execute and exploit your payload. You need to fully observe WAF’s behavior in each payload to understand how you might able to evade those specific restrictions.
SQLMAP, SQLMAP, SQLMAP — You can’t pass this exam if you’re not proficient in this area. Listen, while it’s great that you’re skilled at creating your own SQL payloads, you need to understand automation to gather as much information about the databases as possible.
Reverse Shells — Please expect this, as it is an advanced certification. :>
Take a walk or Rest, if you get stuck — Listen, this gave me so much help to think more creative to create effective payloads.
Take Care of Yourself, you’re not a robot — Folks, if you’ve got sick during the exam, it would be much problematic. Avoid Overfatigue!
Never Set Aside Minimal— Imagine that you’re reporting to a real-world client. Make sure that your report has fully covered all security vulnerabilities present within the applications.

Useful Links:

PHP Object Injection:

Java Deserialization:

SSTI

SSRF

“If you believe, you can do it”~

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View verified achievement from @eLearnSecurity: https://certs.ine.com/a35878dd-91c8-4270-93c5-e3c327524197#gs.gk2y2m

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