Offensive- Security.com WiFu Training Class……………..

A couple of weeks ago I was looking at that the latest Backtrack release and decided to finally check out offensive-security.com. For those of you unfamiliar with offensive-security.com it is a training organization that uses Backtrack to teach penetration testing. It was founded by Mati Aharoni, creator of WHAX and a core developer of Backtrack.

Offensive-Security offers 3 training courses, Pentesting With Backtrack (PWB), Cracking the Perimeter (CTP), and Offensive-Security Wireless Attacks (WiFu). Upon successful completion of the course and hands on lab for that course you are awarded the OSCP(PWB Course), OSCE(CTP) or the OSWP(WiFu) certifications.

What makes these certifications challenging is they are not testing on your ability to memorize answers, they present you with a challenge and you must correctly complete the challenge in an allocated amount of time to be awarded the certification.

I did some online research and saw some really good reviews so I thought I would look into the cost of some classes. I was surprised by the cost ranging of the course, 350 USD for WiFu to 1500 USD for CTP with 60 days of lab access. Although I had done some wireless security work in the past I thought I would give the WiFu course a try.

I went through the registration process and received my course material in the allotted amount of time. The material included a PDF for the class, and some video tutorials. I would say the PDF (and the class) is broken up into two parts, the first is about wireless and wireless security, and the second is about attacking wireless.

I spent last week going over the first half of the class. Because I had not used my wireless skills in a long time this was a great refresher. This part of the class covered 802.11 standards, different wireless modes, different types of packets you will see on a wireless network, and how to choose hardware.

The hardware section was of great interest to me, because of the details it gave. In this section it covered different type of wireless adapters, chip sets, and antenna's details. This section gave some good details on how to choose wireless equipment for what you are testing.

The information in the first part of the class as been wonderful so far and I am looking forward to the "attacking" phase of the class. Once I get more into the attaching phase of the class I will post some more blogs about the class.