my oswe journey

events after my osep journey
continued delivering pentests as usual and obtained a lot of domain admins. broke my own record mentioned in smash the state. currently have 151 domain admins in pocket. created armctf and ctfmirror projects while continuing to maintain vvmlist.

the most important thing after osep is, i finally started to focus on web application vulnerabilities. i always stayed away from them, never really liked them, and never had time to improve myself in that area. however, becoming a more complete senior penetration tester made it a crucial area to focus on.

i took the opportunity of my job supplying me web and mobile application pentests. nothing new since i already know web application vulnerabilities. as i became more familiar with them and finding highs and criticals by smashing applications, i started to feel very comfortable in this area.

health status
i always wanted to get oswe but whenever i tried to start studying, i was getting incredibly sleepy. this also applies to reading a book or a blog post. in general, i was sleepy and tired most of the time. never understood why i wasn't sleepy while doing pentest.

in the end of 2025, it turned out that i was seriously ill due to an allergy, i believe it started sometime in 2024. a blood test showed that the reference range was 0-100 while my result was over 500. that was darn insane. after that i immediately started meds and recovered.

course
i directly bought the course without prior preparation. started to read the pdf as usual. around page 300, i stopped and asked myself "what am i doing?". i thought this because the pdf just contains machine writeups. it's well written in detail but it's not something i'm looking for. i needed something ctfy and whitebox oriented since real world pentests are usually blackbox.

appsecmaster
appsecmaster is a great platform to prepare for oswe. it has vulnerability specific and mansion (which are like oswe machines) challenges in whitebox perspective. i started from the beginner track even though i knew how to exploit those vulnerabilities, the key point was automating the process in python so that i would be comfortable during the exam. in the end i solved all challenges, wrote poc scripts for them and noted things i should beware of. not only is the platform excellent, but the people behind appsecmaster are also extremely helpful.

bmdyy's tudo, testr, chat.js and order
william moody's practice vulnerable applications are frequently recommended in oswe communities. i only solved tudo and liked it but i'm sure the other vulnerable applications are great too.

awae labs
after practicing well, i finally jumped into awae labs. i liked the machines that are not in the course pdf. not much to say about it since i solved and automated the process as usual. i also think offsec gives some strong hints about what the exam will be like.

exam
i found the exam was not that hard, also pretty straightforward. it's still tough tho. there are rabbit holes of course, but somehow i didn't fall for them. i earned the first 50 points within 6 hours. 8 hours later i got another 35 points for the second machine's authentication bypass. at this point i took a very long break since i used my brain a lot and i was really tired.

i tried to sleep but couldn't. i think it's because of drinking a lot of black tea, cortado and redbull. also i couldn't stop thinking about how to achieve the last rce and complete 100% of the exam.

i don't remember well, but i believe about 15 hours later i continued my exam. i eventually obtained the rce flag, roughly 20 hours after getting the last authentication bypass flag. i prepared my findings document, checked poc scripts multiple times on both my machine and debug machine. also reverted the target machines for sure.

certification
i started to write my report during my exam time and sent it quickly. i still had 11+24 hours for the challenge. less than 1,5 days later i've received a mail from offsec that says i'm now oswe certified.