The last month (January 2025), I passed my first (but not least) certification in cybersecurity: the “Practical Junior Penetration Tester” (aka PJPT) of TCM Security 🎉
Before I’ll talk about the exam, the course to train for the exam was well designed. I loved the format (videos with some references or code snippets) cause it was a good training to take organized notes by myself and not just copy-paste text-based content.
It took me an about 1 month and half to take over all the video content of the course.
Beside the learning time, I took a 1-month sub to the platform Vulnlab to crush some Active Directory solo machines. Maybe was overkill but yeah… I wanted to test myself 😎
Go back to the exam. The exam is practical❗ You have 2 days to perform your penetration test on the environment and 2 days more to complete the asked pentest report (here for the template).
The goal of the exam is to compromise the Domain Controller and write a report with all the vulnerabilities (+ remediations) you’ve found during your internal penetration test. Obviously, you need evidence for each vulnerability to clearly show your skills to the reviewer.
After all the learning and training parts, I was ready to take it down the exam in 1 take
I began the exam early in the morning to be refreshed and clear-minded. I gathered the VPN pack, set up a new Exegol container (big up to Exegol 💋), and initiated my penetration test. After 2 or 3 hours, I was at 90% to get the Domain Controller, but I was now blocked… Not during for 1 hour, 2, 5, 10… After review all my notes and some videos from the course (and a good night), I finally found the thing to finish the exam 24 hours after my last step…
My honest reaction…
I spent the entire day on the report to put all my screenshots and BOOM: a clear and complete 27 page report sent to the reviewer. I finally finished my exam!
Now, we need to wait for the result…
… BUT not too long. The day after I received an email congratulating me on passing my exam 🥳
I was happy about the journey, and the new skills I have now in my pocket.
If you want to see my certification, you can go to my About page. You will find a link to my certifications wallet (or just click here 🙃)
Thanks for reading me and see yah!
POW!
BYEEEEEEEEEE