My day-job focus primarily on information strategy, with an occasional
excursion into the tactical level. Operational activities, such as actively pentesting is
relatively far removed from my day-to-day professional work. I have
always found it very important to have hands-on knowledge and skills,
and that is why I always keep my eye open for opportunities to keep my operational skills honed.

For a while, I have been eying the Pentesting with BackTrack (Offsec 101) training that is offered by Offensive Security, and finally decided to sign up for it.

While I have only just started and have not gone much past the introductory stuff, I am already impressed. I have already re-assessed my valuation of SNMP as an attack vector. Also, from an educational point of view, I appreciate the manual ARP spoof that is demonstrated in the course, immediately followed by the tools that can do it semi-automatically.

What I am also very impressed with is the way in which the whole class enrollment process is organized. Offensive Security has done a great job at streamlining it and makes it a pleasure to work with them before even starting the class.

Keep in mind though-- the class is not for the faint-of-heart, nor for people without a reasonable technical background. The material that is covered is well-presented and (to the best of my knowledge) factually correct. There is little or no hand-holding for stuff that they consider to be basic knowledge, and that is fine with me.

At the price that they charge, I would say that the class is excellent value for money.


Highly recommended! As I go further into the material, I will probably post some more on it.