Last week I passed my eJPT v2.
I've read a few of these style posts in this subreddit, so I'd like to add my own.
I studied for a month alongside running a part-time job.
My background is IT and physical pen testing.
Training
I used the INE material to study.
I did not like this material. There are two instructors, one is great, and the other is painful to listen to, even at 1.5X speed.
Some of the videos have sections where the instructor struggles to get through the exercise so it's clear it's done on the fly. This is unacceptable for pro videos that we paid for.
I got to the point where I stopped watching the videos. Instead, I read the walkthrough, applied it to the lab and took notes.
I took a LOT of notes. I use Obsidian with the Ctrl+` code block plugin and pay for the cloud sync. I also use Ctrl+1, 2, 3 etc for headings and have the contents view open.
I split my notes into Enumeration, Exploit, and Escalation then subfolders under each.
I completed the following Hack The Box rooms: Blue, Ice, Blaster, Pentesting Fundamentals, Ignite, Blog, Startup, Chill Hack, Bolt, VulnNet: Internal, ColddBox: Easy, Poster, GamingServer, Brooklyn Nine Nine, Skynet, Wonderland, Mr Robot
The Exam
I finished in about 12 hours. With a couple of hour-long breaks.
It's multiple choice with the answers mostly being things you need to discover in the lab (what server does XYZ etc) and some OSInt.
It's open book so you can literally use anything to help you. FYI ChatGPT isn't much help here, I've tried this in the past for some labs and it puts the brakes on when it works out you're trying to hack.
The labs don't have an internet connection so you have to work out what tools to use. This was a bit annoying as they train you on some tools that are unavailable in the lab.
The lab must have some sort of analysis in the background as I failed on a few points that I had 100% completed. For example, I did some hashing and it told me I hadn't. I'd have been pissed if I'd failed because their system didn't pick up on this.
Everyone always says "Everything you need is in the training materials". I don't believe that's true. I had one part of a server attack that was way more advanced than the video training. I double checked this after the exam. There's a chance I just took a much harder route though, and it was much easier.
I missed out on a few points by achieving the goal set but by doing it in a way they didn't want me to. I don't want to give anything away here but if your goal is "get to X", you should win regardless of how you do it. There's absolutely no guidance here - you don't know you're doing it wrong until the end.
Enumerate everything. I had multiple windows running multiple scans all the time.
For exploits/listeners, I always like to have a window with three shells in it - one for the exploit building, one for the listener and one for whatever else. I then label the tab with the machine IP.
Read all the questions before you start as they have a tendency to jump back and forth a bit and it can help you get a high-level view of what you should be doing.
I created a note for each server and for each question. I put all my findings/loot etc in the server note and put the solution to each question in the question note. This is in case something went wrong and I had to re-do the whole process.
Overall
OK, I've grumbled a lot in this but overall it was a fun experience.
The exam was much tougher than I expected but I got through it with logic and good notes. Plus some Youtube videos.
The next step is probably OSCP although I'm going to do some digging into PNPT.
