This week I got the CREA certification to add to my list of CISSP, CEPT, Visa QSA. This certification required a good practical and conceptual knowledge of reverse engineering. The certification requires a good working knowledge of components such as IA-32 assembly language, malware reversing, expert level knowledge of IDA Pro, OllyDbg, HiEW, Dumpbin etc., PE File header, repairing packed and compacted binaries, using system level reversing etc. The exam was good and tested on the concepts of the reverse engineer.

I finally got the Certified Expert Penetration Tester (CEPT) with a good score on the practical. There were two parts to the certification : an objective multiple choice written test and a practical. To qualify one needs 70% on the written and 70% on the practical portion of the test.
The written test was not too challenging if you follow the material taught at the InfoSec Institute’s Advanced Ethical Hacking course, however, the practical made up on the lack of challenge. The practical involved writing an unpublished stack overflow exploit for a real-world commercial software of IACRB’s choosing, a format string exploit for a custom application and writing a patch for windows binary to subvert registration mechanism on the binary. One could write the exploit in the form of a python script (that I chose), a shell script , a perl script or a binary written in a language of our choosing. The solution could be quite flexible when it came to the choice of language for writing the exploits.
Personally speaking, this was a great learning experience for me and I plan to continue learning in the interesting field of vulnerability development!