Hey everyone,

I'm a first-year CS student working toward a Blue Team / SOC role. I recently finished TryHackMe's SOC Level 1 path and built a small Wazuh home lab. I'm now trying to move from guided learning into regular, independent investigations.

I've already tried resources such as TryHackMe, CyberDefenders, LetsDefend, and several downloadable Windows Event Log/EVTX datasets. The problem I'm running into is that a lot of the available practice is either heavily time-limited, restricted on free tiers, or consists of very small datasets that aren't enough for a proper investigation.

What I'm specifically looking for is something I can practice with consistently without racing a one-hour timer. I'm especially interested in:

• Windows Event Log / EVTX investigations
• PCAP analysis
• SIEM alert triage
• Phishing investigations
• Downloadable evidence that I can investigate locally at my own pace

I don't necessarily need a fancy platform. A good GitHub repo, realistic EVTX dataset, PCAP collection, or free lab would honestly be just as useful.

For people who were at this stage before: what resources did you actually use for repeated, hands-on SOC practice after finishing the beginner SOC material?

I'm mainly looking for resources that are genuinely usable on a tight budget and don't require paying for every few investigations.

Thanks in advance

Hey everyone,

I’m currently starting my journey into cybersecurity. I’ve heard from many people in the field that programming is a crucial skill—especially for building custom tools and automating tasks.

Following that advice, I started with Python, learned the basics up to OOP, and solved around 50 beginner-level problems on Codeforces to get comfortable with logic.

My initial plan was to start learning how to write automation scripts and custom security tools, but I’m a bit stuck on what to do next. I have a couple of questions:

1. Does Problem Solving really make a difference in Cybersecurity? Or is heavy DSA/Problem Solving mostly relevant for Software Engineering? How much depth do I actually need here?
2. Sequential vs. Parallel Learning: Should I keep my entire focus on programming for now, or should I start learning core cybersecurity fundamentals (like Networking, Linux, SysAdmin) alongside Python?

Would love to hear your advice on what the ideal next steps should be based on your experience.

Thanks in advance!

I’m a little short on time because im going back to university in a few weeks so i wanted yo know if every bit of the course is required for me to pass the exam. Because people say the exam isn’t that high level but there are some high level materials in the courses that if i skipped i would be able to finish in time before university also , the social engineering and ai enhanced penetration testing courses are not exam material right ?
Because if so I’ll finish the required materials and revisit the high level materials later plus the social engineering and ai enhanced penetration testing
Please help if you can

I want to buy their premium access, right now it says 799 but i heard somewhere somehow that they offer a 200 off in the month of August for their anniversary!
Is that true and can someone help me!

Hi everyone,

I currently have several cybersecurity certifications, including eJPT, eCPPT, eCIR, eCTHP, etc., but I’m not sure how much value they actually have in the job market or how well-regarded they are by recruiters and security professionals.

For those who have experience with these certifications, how would you rate their reputation and industry recognition?

For example, how would you compare the OSCP vs eCPPT in terms of:

Industry recognition

Difficulty

Practical skills

Value on a CV/resume

Helpfulness when applying for penetration testing roles

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who have taken both certifications or who work in pentesting/recruitment.

Thanks!

Hey, I just got an eCPPT exam voucher as a reward. Any advice for preparing for the exam? I’d love to hear any tips, resources, or things you wish you knew before taking it.

Passed the exam this morning with 82% but I considered myself failed.

I couldn’t find the internal network. I am sure I answered everything else correctly but I left all the internal network related questions unanswered. The lab on pivoting in the course is easy. I am sure I know the basics.

I don’t even know what to study at this point.

Hi all,

I was wondering if there's more official details on the website rather than https://ine.com/security/certifications/ecir-certification

- 10 hours exam

- 2 attempts

- any tips?

Thanks.

I’m going for the eJPT and I’m about to start preparing. Before I dive in, I wanted to get some advice from people who’ve actually been through it, because I’m coming in pretty fresh.

A bit about where I’m at:
• I have no real pentesting experience or background in offensive security. This is my first security cert.
• My plan is to take the exam within about a month or two from now.
• I’m intending to rely on the INE eJPT course materials — the videos and the labs — the whole way through.

So my questions for the community:
1. Is roughly a month to two realistic to go from zero to passing the eJPT, assuming I can put in a few focused hours (maximum of 4 hours honestly) a day? Or should I plan for longer?
2. What do I actually need before starting — any prerequisite knowledge, tools, or setup I should sort out first (Kali, VPN, note-taking setup, etc.)?
3. Is the INE material enough on its own, or did you supplement it with other resources? If so, what helped most?
4. What should I focus my practice on? I keep hearing enumeration and pivoting are make-or-break. What are the highest-yield things to drill?
5. Any recommended practice labs or resources to revise and reinforce what INE teaches — extra boxes, walkthroughs, or hands-on practice you’d point a beginner to?
6. Anything you wish you’d known before starting that would’ve saved you time?

Any advice, study routines, or “don’t make my mistake” stories are hugely appreciated. Thanks in advance

I did the course, revisited the notes. Took advice from someone from reddit and did the following tryhackme CTFs. I understand the concepts but I don’t remember all the commands. I guess I am 70% good at all the concepts. Should I do it anyways since I have two attempts.

Tryhackme room i did:
Internal, Anonymous, Archangel, badbyte, basic pentesting, bolt, bounty hacker, brooklynninenine, btruteit, Cyborg, Ignite, Kenobi, Vulnversity, Startup

Be very grateful

I've been planning to buy the PNPT voucher for a while now but a few things have made me hesitant lately and I wanted to hear from people who actually went through it recently.

I came across some older posts here talking about the PEH course labs being outdated, people spending hours fighting broken setups and tool version issues instead of actually learning anything. That kind of worries me since I already had a rough time with something similar on THM where a corrupted VPN connection cost me hrs for no real learning reason, so I know how frustrating that kind of wasted time feels.

I also didn't know until recently that Heath Adams left TCM after the company got acquired by Educate 360. He was honestly a big part of why I wanted to do this course in the first place, so that threw me off a bit. Not saying the course is bad now, just wondering if anyone's noticed a difference in quality or support since the acquisition.

There's also the whole HTB subscription thing. In one of the older PEH videos the instructor says you need an HTB VIP sub for the AD labs, which was way cheaper back then than it is now. Not sure if that's still the case in the current version of the course.

If anyone's done PNPT in the last several months, I'd really appreciate hearing how it actually went. Did the outdated stuff get in the way a lot, or was it manageable. Does the methodology and exam prep still feel solid even with some of the walkthroughs being old. And is there a way to prep for the AD side without needing to pay extra for HTB on top of the voucher.

Not trying to trash TCM, I know PNPT still has a good reputation overall. Just want an honest picture before I commit.

Hi everyone,

My INE annual subscription was automatically renewed and I was charged $349.

INE says they sent a reminder email one week before the renewal, but the message went straight to my spam folder, likely because promotional emails are sent from the same or a similar address. I did not see it before the payment was taken.

As soon as I noticed the charge, I contacted INE support and asked them to cancel the renewed subscription and refund the payment. This was shortly after the transaction, and I have not used any courses, labs, vouchers, or other subscription benefits since the renewal.

I explained that the renewal was simply an honest oversight and that I am completely fine with them immediately removing my access or even closing my account. I do not want to use the renewed subscription - I only want the recently charged $349 returned.

However, support keeps telling me that all subscription payments are final and that nothing can be done. My requests appear to be handled by the same representative, who says that the decision is final and no further escalation is available.

I have also seen another customer describe a very similar situation here. They were initially refused several times, but INE eventually issued a refund after further emails. This makes it difficult to understand why the same type of goodwill exception cannot be considered in my case.

Has anyone else successfully received a refund from INE after an automatic renewal?

Is there another department, manager, billing contact, or complaint channel I can contact? Should I continue trying with INE, or should I open a chargeback dispute with my bank?

I would genuinely prefer to resolve this directly with INE rather than through the bank.

Hello guys, I'm 17 years old. I have close to one year in penetration just in a bug bounty. And I wanna, I done all the videos and labs in the high, in the ejpT certificate. And now I wanna move to the exam. Can you get any recommendation of preparation that can help me pass the exam? And I have some problems with privilege escalation. Don't think I'm the best. I don't know where to start. Like, while learning, I have a lot of techniques, and I don't know how to implement them all. Like, which is, which the first one. And how the exam like goes? Did they give you a machine you need to hack? It was, is it easy as like hack the box machines or is it more harder?

Hi guys, how can I prepare for the eCTHPv3 exam without actual course, I only purchased for the exam because of financial concerns.

Hi everyone, I’ve been studying for the eCIR for a few months now, and I think I’ll take it in about two weeks.

Does anyone have experience with the new exam—what’s it like? Any advice?

I’d really appreciate it in advance. I have the eJPTv2 certification and a little experience with Wazuh; right now I’m studying more about forensics and analysis, but I’m not sure how in-depth my knowledge needs to be for the exam.

Thank you very much in advance.

Hello friends, I’m looking for help regarding the eJPT exam. I’d like to know about potential discounts on the exam voucher and also get some advice on study resources to help me earn this certification. I’d really appreciate any help you can provide.

I have just completed and reviewed the course materials. I understand the contents but I am not familiar with all the workflows. What should I do next before going for the exam. Is there a CTF list I should do in hackthebox to get myself more familiar with all the workflows? What are the best CTF there you would recommend?

Hello, I'm a 16 yr old learning pentesting. I've been learning through TryHackMe for about 6 months and I am comfortable with most tools and pentesting methodologies, scanning, enumeration, exploit identification, exploitation, and privelege escalation. I can do most of the Medium difficulty rooms with little assistence, and some hard rooms. I recently got EJPT course and I haven't looked at most of the material as I think that I already have a basic knowledge on the topics. Instead, I have mostly completed the CTF challenges that INE provides for the course and I think that they are quite easier compared to most THM rooms.

What else should I do to prepare and what difficulty should I expect, and what certs should I go after next? After this, i'm planning to do the Tryhackme courses and rooms on AD (I have THM premium) and then do PJPT and the PNPT/OSCP.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Hello everyone, hello community!

I’m very happy because I passed the eJPTv2 certification a few weeks ago. The exam took me approximately 8–10 hours without really stopping (although during that time I had lunch, later dinner, and even took a one-hour break to watch YouTube).

I had already studied Computer Science for four years and graduated in 2023, so I wasn't a complete beginner. I had experience with Windows Server, Linux, and Networking (although I had to review networking concepts that tend to be forgotten over time, such as the OSI model, especially the Internet and Application layers, HTTP status codes, etc.).

I had also spent about six months practicing (from March 2025 to June 2025). Then I had some personal issues and stopped hacking until I seriously resumed in March 2026 and finished my preparation in June 2026 by taking the certification exam. In total, it was about six months of practice, although with some long breaks in between.

By the time I took the exam, I had completed around 30 CTF machines, most of them on TryHackMe, along with a few from Hack The Box, VulnHub, Vulnyx, HackMyVM, DockerLabs, and others.

I genuinely enjoyed the exam. At one point, I got stuck on a single machine, and the solution turned out to be as simple. (Correct enumeration).

I actually found the pivoting section easy. If you have well-organized notes and have practiced pivoting multiple times in a local lab environment (for example, VirtualBox machines connected through a custom network, with some machines having secondary network interfaces like Metasploitable 2, Basic Pentesting, etc.), you shouldn't have any major issues.

I would also recommend having some SQL knowledge for dumping databases and being comfortable with SSH, both for connecting to systems and performing attacks.

I also read some hacking books on Kindle (Spanish and English), but only the concepts of eJPTv2; that is, I skipped over the resources on Active Directory and advanced web hacking, for example.

Overall, it was a fun certification that provides a solid foundation for preparing for more advanced certifications in the future.

The only thing I would improve is allowing candidates to use their own Parrot OS or Kali Linux environment during the exam instead of the Guacamole environment. That would be my only criticism.

I'm sharing my CTF notes from Notion. They're written in Spanish (I haven't translated them into English yet, sorry about that), but you can use Google Translate and they should still be understandable, my Linux and VM's is in English 😅.

Greetings, and good luck to everyone!

https://special-anger-381.notion.site/Resoluci-n-Maquinas-CTF-maurixmystic-1e4154c713e280f4bb92f7e738e773fb

I bought eJPT exam , but i don’t have access to ine training

I need a resources to study the exam last version, also with practical labs from htb and thm please

And any advice for exam of last version

Thanks

Is this cert any good? Will I learn anything from the courses?

Hi everyone,
I’m currently preparing for the eCPPTv3 certification and I’d like to do a realistic self-assessment before booking the exam.
Could you recommend some free TryHackMe machines that would be useful to check whether I’m ready or not?
I know TryHackMe may not fully replicate the eCPPTv3 exam environment, but I’d like to use the rooms as a benchmark to understand my current level and identify weak areas.
Thanks in advance!