🔬 EC-Council Certified Ethical Hacker Practical (CEH Practical)
The CEH Practical is a hands-on examination offered by the EC-Council. It validates a candidate’s operational capability to execute security audits, run vulnerability scanning protocols, audit systems architecture, analyze logs, and perform exploit execution across active target platforms.
📋 Exam Specifications
- Format: 6-hour practical, proctored challenge.
- Questions: 20 scenario-based practical questions requiring system interactions.
- Passing Criteria: Correctly solve 14 out of 20 challenges (70%).
- Exam Targets: A network of multiple servers, clients, and directory nodes simulating active enterprise scenarios.
🛠️ Core Skills Validated
- Vulnerability Identification & Sweeping: Using automated scanners (such as Nmap and Nessus) to catalog open ports, locate system vulnerabilities, and check service banners.
- System Compromise & Exploitation: Running customized exploitation scripts and using frameworks (like Metasploit) to gain initial access.
- Network Sniffing & Traffic Analysis: Parsing packet captures (
pcaplogs) using Wireshark to extract credentials, identify routing vectors, and map protocols. - SQL Injection Exploitation: Manually and automatically (via SQLMap) extracting database schemas and dumping user data tables.
- Cryptography & Hashing Audits: Decrypting hashes (MD5, SHA1, SHA256, NTLM) using offline password cracking techniques (John the Ripper, Hashcat) and analyzing encryption schemas.
- Web and Mobile Security Audits: Auditing web applications for OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities and verifying mobile package configurations.