KLCP exam review december 2023

Hi everyone ,earlier this year I was able to pass Kali Linux Certified Professional exam. This exam is offered by kali linux team which of course is under offensive security team newly re-branded as offsec. You can do the exam simply by purchasing the learn fundamentals voucher from offsec which goes for 799$ at the moment. Good thing with this is that you will be able to access pen210 (Offensive Security Wireless Professional course) commonly known as the Wi-Fu course plus one exam attempt for it and other fundamental tracks plus their badges if you pass their final quizzes.

About

On this blog post I will write about my experience and fears during my study for the exam and when doing the exam. From the above linked picture you can see I was able to end the exam early approximately 36 minutes, normally its duration is 90 minutes.

Results

I failed 9 questions out of 80 which in my opinion was fair enough considering the fact that i didn’t go through my answers after finishing. I felt like it was a pain going through all 80 questions. I used 1 month to prepare for this exam. I will breakdown my work later in this blog. The pass mark normally is 80%, I got 88%… oops a close call it was!

Prerequisites

Before starting, I read a couple of its reviews and I can frankly say that right now there is no pdf version of the course anymore. There is a couple of exercises/labs but there are no quizzes that were included in the earlier version of this course. Right now you will find a more self paced content on their training site.

I had good knowledge when it comes to navigating linux operating system having used it for approximately 2 years as my host OS before sitting for the exam. I also did redhat system administration (I) course prior to sitting for this exam. Be warned though the knowledge I had before doing the KLCP course content was no where near to giving me the victorious win but was a good supplement to it.

Study breakdown

The first two weeks I went through all the materials writing short notes on the same. I also did the practical labs after every chapter or during the chapter where necessary. I realized that I wouldn’t have enough time to go through all the notes that I had summarized and the commands written there so I re-summarized the notes more in the course of the 3rd week. In this same week I had seen a wayback url which had the previous quizzes for KLCP exam which were included in the earlier version of this course, so I did them too and made notes on the same.

I did not struggle with commands especially in chapter 7 because of the iptables commands, turning out to be my favourite. I would suggest for anybody having difficulty with iptables to go through some tutorials on YouTube. One can also go through the whole book once again and extract all the commands written in the book and their meanings just to be sure but i personally did not do that.

The fourth week I was just peeping into OSWP course content and its reviews so I did not dedicate as much time for the exam. I scheduled the exam 2 days before in the fourth week. I used those days to refreshen up my knowledge and also made sure I had enough sleep.

Course Content

There are 11 chapters in the course content and I will briefly discuss them.

About Kali Linux

This is self explanatory. You don’t want to miss it! You will learn about the differences between debian and Kali, the flow of packages and the main features that make Kali Linux such gem!

Getting Started With Kali Linux

This is a sweet one, probably the start of the practical labs. There is a mention about the rolling feature of this distribution and much more. A lot of explanation is done, after this chapter you will have answers to some confusing terms like operating system, distribution , upstream updates etc

Linux Fundamentals

More practical work here, most people will start here which is totally wrong imho. Linux survival tactics, file system heirarchy and basic navigation commands are taught here

Installing Kali Linux

The various methods of installing Kali while enjoying its prime features are shown here. You will learn a lot here.

Configuring Kali Linux

All about configurations. What services are disabled by default and why etc

Helping Yourself and Getting Help

You ever asked a question and someone replied “RTFM”. Then this chapter is for you. Talks about how you should go about asking questions to avoid read the fucking manual kind of responses.

Securing and Monitoring Kali Linux

Things start getting interesting here. You definitely don’t want to miss out the fun in this chapter. This is where they will talk about firewalls , services and a lot more specifically in Kali Linux. There is a lot of lab work from here following the next three chapters.

Debian Package Management

You know what they say, a tool is as good as who is using it! This chapter here will help you know a lot about Kali through its Package manager.

Advanced Usage

Ahaaa, You all want to build your own custom Kali ISOs… This is the right place to begin.

Kali Linux in the Enterprise

Kali is highly customizable. This is where you will top up knowledge from previous chapters with large scale enterprise usage of Kali in mind. They teach saltstack as their main configuration management tool. I know most of you are aware of ansible , chef etc , they are types of configuration management tools.

Introduction to Security Assessments

Before putting Kali Linux into use, you must learn about the different security assessments concepts.

By the time you are done with the course, Kali linux will be a walk in the park. You will know why everything is where it is, what every default files means and contains, you will basically be very comfortable with the distribution at whole.

During exam

• Don’t be in hurry to finish the exam like me, take your time and enjoy the exam.
• If a question is hard just leave it, there is a feature to save the question for later review. The first question will always throw you off!
• Maintain your cool, breath in and have a glass of water with you. Might come in handy!
• Go through the answers one more time after finishing up and make sure that every answer selected is the one you did choose.

Resources

https://dev.to/sucyfer/my-journey-to-klcp-4d9n
https://www.reddit.com/r/Kalilinux/comments/owrvyu/klcp_course_and_exam_review_survival_guide/?rdt=46330
https://github.com/chacka0101/Kali-Linux-Certified-Professional-KLCP-Cheat-Sheet/blob/master/Kali%20Linux%20Certified%20Professional%20(KLCP)%20Cheat%20Sheet.md.md
http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/html/ro-RO/sect.firewall-packet-filtering.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20210803003815/https://kali.training/downloads/klcp-quiz.pdf

Conclusion

Kali Linux Certified Professional is a great addition to any resume, especially if you are considering penetration testing and ethical hacking career paths. It will also teach you the fundamentals of Kali Linux and any other Debian based Linux distribution. All in all, I wanted it, I got it, and you can too! — sucyfer.