As mentioned in earlier posts, the OSCP certification is something I wanted to try for a while.
Thankfully it’s (somewhat) related to my work so the company was willing to financially support me for this course. After getting the final confirmation, I signed up for the PEN-200 course.
After signing up, students are required to hand in an official piece of identification before allowed access to the course and the labs, so I needed to comply with this as well.
Obstacle OpenPGP-encrypted emails – honestly, never used this much. Maybe shame on me? Not sure. Anyway, since I’m mostly using webmailers these days, how do I get this to work? Answer: Mailvelope, a Firefox extension.
After a couple of tries sending in the required information, it finally worked out and I was granted access to the course and the labs.
Obstacle VMware – I’m not Offensive Security so obviously it was their decision but I would have welcomed pre-prepared Kali VMs for virtualbox, not VMware. Even getting a trial version of VMware Fusion is a pain. brew.sh saved my sanity, at least until the trial period expires.
In the course (I’m doing the basics now, can’t tell about the later exercises), there are browser-based exercises [browser, openvpn, terminal] where you connect to a prepared machine but there are also exercises where you need to run your own Kali (presumably) virtual machines to do something.
Obstacle openvpn – this cost me a lot of nerves to set up because I was looking in the wrong place. openvpn itself can be easily installed but it needs a openvpn config file – which was nowhere linked on any page I browsed (introduction, help, FAQ – you name it). I had previously downloaded the config but just couldn’t find the file / link anymore – because it’s hidden – or linked – in the VPN link right at the top of every page in the course. Argh – well, I mentioned it cost me a lot of nerves. Obviously, I know now.
After all that, I was finally able to get started and I’m doing the basics now. No need to rush, I’m looking at this as a long-term project anyway.