adrian@home:~$

I Passed CEH

I passed the CEH (312-50) exam, yay! It was a long and challenging journey, but I finally made it. It grew as an idea in my head back in 2019, I tackled in November 2020. In this post I want to tell you how.

My Road To Success

Because I didn’t have two years of experience in the field of IT security I had to purchase a course to attempt the CEH exam. I chose the iLearn course from ECCoucil which I purchased via TÜV Rheinland Akademie. You actually buy a voucher that is valid for one year which allows you to attempt the exam and to access the official course material. This includes video lessions, access to virtual environments to practise your new skills and a digital book that is a collection of powerpoints used in the online lessions but with much more detail.

Time To Do Some Self-Studying

I found the online lessions quite useful so I watched all of them to get into the topic and get a rough idea of the concepts and the terminology. At that time the digital book from the official courseware was way to much for me and it was hard to get an overview of what I need to know and where to find it. That’s why I also read the book CEH Certified Ethical Hacker All-in-One Exam Guide from Matt Walker. I definitley recommend this book! It really teaches almost everything you need to know to have a good standing in the real exam. It also comes with a lot of (online) practice quesitons. In addition I have forked a repo with personal notes from the book and added my own notes. This helped me a lot to memorize all the terminologies and concepts. You can find the forked repository CEHv10StudyGuide in my GitHub account. A second source I have used in addition to the official courseware was the Boson Practice Exams for CEH. I can also recommend those, if you want to practise with exams and realistic questions. Furthermore I definitely advice you to build a study plan considering your prior knowledge and time to study. Stick to it! It really helped me a lot to stay organized!

The Exam

In the end I scheduled the exam three months before the voucher would have expired. You have four hours to complete all of the 125 questions. It took me half of the time but I read all questions very very carefully and I would say two hours is more than enough to complete the test. Anyways you immediately know if you passed or failed after you submit the exam!

Key Takeaways

  • Decide to attempt the CEH examination :-)
  • For self-studying buy the AIO book from Matt Walker and the Boson Exams
  • Build your study plan considering your prior knowledge and time to study
  • Take the exam if you feel ready!
  • Pass ;-)