My Preparation Process to Complete CRTO — Day 1

Hi Medium Audience,
Today we are going to explore my learning process for completing the CRTO certification. This certification is purely focused on an assumed breach scenario, where we gain access to active directory network using red teaming methodologies and the process of escalating our privileges both horizontally and vertically to compromise the entire active directory network.

Since, I have previously completed OSCP, I do have basic idea of Active Directory Concepts, attack methodology, lateral movement and privilege escalation techniques.

But for those who are new to Active Directory, they can refer my guide on how to prepare for any Basic Active Directory certifications and concepts related to it here :

AD FOR OSCP (Active Directory Guide)

I chose CRTO after my OSCP as it explores active directory pentesting using C2 Framework Cobalt Strike, which I found interesting, as it is a commercial tool, and we get to explore how to bypass existing windows protections to inject our payloads, and execute them. It also provides on some tips on how to make ourselves less detectible by the blue team.

Once you buy CRTO, you get lifetime access to the course modules, but the concept of how we buy labs are interesting. Instead of buying 60,90 days worth of lab like in any other offsec certifications, in CRTO we can buy labs on a hourly basis. Whenever we feel we are good to explore the labs, we can buy it for 15,30,60 hours respectively. There is no time limit on when you can schedule the exam. There is no specific exam voucher for you to use in under a time limit. You can navigate to portal, and schedule it any time of the year.

I have started preparing for CRTO certification, and here is my learning process that I am going to use in the process. If you have any better suggestions or tips that could help me, kindly post it in the comments section.

1. I am going to explain the complex topics in active directory in very simple and laymen terms for the beginners from whatever I have prepared from online resources and course modules, every week in future blogs, so that I can share my understanding of the concepts and help others who are new and struggling to understand these concepts.
2. I will go through the entire course module twice to make sure I understand the concepts thoroughly before getting into the labs.
3. Once, I get a thorough understanding of the concepts and what I am facing in the exam, I plan on buying the labs for specific hours based on my learning result.
4. I will complete the labs twice, to get a muscle memory of the entire step by step process and checklist on what to follow for the exam.
5. I will spend some time to learn programming languages in some depths, such as c,c++ and python to make sure I am able to read the payload codes and modify them for bypass.
6. I will explore the labs again with different modified payloads to check for bypass and evading the defender and antivirus.
7. Make sure to take proper notes in the entire process, and key summary section for each module to look back before the exam.
8. Finally, schedule the exam for 48 hours, and hopefully get certified :)

I will be posting updates either daily or weekly with simplified explanation of different complex topics, so make sure to follow if you are also aiming to complete CRTO this year, to have a shared learning path.

This is all for this blog, lets meet again in the future with better results hopefully. Hope you enjoyed reading till here.