the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in Birmingham, Alabama where he received both a Bachelor and Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. He currently holds the following certifications: (ISC)² CISSP, EC-Council CEH, CND and CHFI, CompTIA CASP, PenTest+, CySA+, Security+, and Network+, Cisco CCNA Route and Switch, CCNA Security, CCNA Voice, CCNA CyberOps, and CCDA, Axelos ITIL, Metasploit Pro Certified Specialist, and Nexpose Certified Administrator. He has taught many of the certifications he holds. Kenneth lives in Colorado with his wife, Nadean, and their two children Shelby and Gavin.
Introduction
This exam book is designed to give the CEH candidate a realistic idea of what the CEH exam will look like. As a candidate, you should be familiar with Wireshark, Nmap, and other tools. To get the most out of these exams, you should consider constructing a virtual lab and practicing with the tools to become familiar with viewing the logs that are generated. In preparing for the CEH exam, you will benefit greatly by using YouTube. YouTube is a goldmine of information—and it's free. It is also recommended that you keep up with the latest malware and cybersecurity news provided online. Most cybersecurity-related websites provide insight on the latest vulnerabilities and exploits that are in the wild. Keeping up-to-date with this information will only add value to your CEH knowledge and will help solidify your understanding even more.
What Is a CEH?
The Certified Ethical Hacker exam is to validate that those holding the certification under-stand the broad range of subject matter that is required for someone to be an effective ethical hacker. The reality is that most days, if you are paying attention to the news, you will see a news story about a company that has been compromised and had data stolen, a government that has been attacked, or even enormous denial-of-service attacks, making it difficult for users to gain access to business resources.
The CEH is a certification that recognizes the importance of identifying security issues to get them remediated. This is one way companies can protect themselves against attacks—by getting there before the attackers do. It requires someone who knows how to follow tech-niques that attackers would normally use. Just running scans using automated tools is insuf-ficient because as good as security scanners may be, they will identify false positives—cases where the scanner indicates an issue that isn’t really an issue. Additionally, they will miss a lot of vulnerabilities—false negatives—for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the vulnerability or attack may not be known.
Because companies need to understand where they are vulnerable to attack, they need people who are able to identify those vulnerabilities, which can be very complex. Scanners are a good start, but being able to find holes in complex networks can take the creative intel-ligence that humans offer. This is why we need ethical hackers. These are people who can take extensive knowledge of a broad range of technical subjects and use it to identify vulner-abilities that can be exploited.
The important part of that two-word phrase, by the way, is “ethical.” Companies have protections in place because they have resources they don’t want stolen or damaged. When they bring in someone who is looking for vulnerabilities to exploit, they need to be certain that nothing will be stolen or damaged. They also need to be certain that anything that may be seen or reviewed isn’t shared with anyone else. This is especially true when it comes to any vulnerabilities that have been identified.
The CEH exam, then, has a dual purpose. It not only tests deeply technical knowledge but also binds anyone who is a certification holder to a code of conduct. Not only will you be expected to know the content and expectations of that code of conduct, you will be expected to live by that code. When companies hire or contract to people who have their CEH certification, they can be assured they have brought on someone with discretion who can keep their secrets and provide them with professional service in order to help improve their security posture and keep their important resources protected.
About the Exam
The CEH exam has much the same parameters as other professional certification exams. You will take a computerized, proctored exam. You will have 4 hours to complete 125 questions. That means you will have, on average, roughly 2 minutes per question. The questions are all multiple choice. The exam can be taken through the ECC Exam Center or at a Pearson VUE center.
Should you want to take your certification even further, you could go after the CEH Prac-tical exam. For this exam you must perform an actual penetration test and write a report at the end of it. This demonstrates that in addition to knowing the body of material covered by the exam, you can put that knowledge to use in a practical way. You will be expected to know how to compromise systems and identify vulnerabilities.
To pass the exam, you will have to correctly answer a certain number of questions, though the actual number will vary. The passing grade varies depending on the difficulty of the questions asked. The harder the questions that are asked out of the complete pool of questions, the fewer questions you need to get right to pass the exam. If you get easier ques-tions, you will need to get more of the questions right to pass. There are some sources of information that will tell you that you need to get 70 percent of the questions right, and that may be okay for general guidance and preparation as a rough low-end marker. However, keep in mind that when you sit down to take the actual test at the testing center, the passing grade will vary. The score you will need to achieve will range from 60 to 85 percent.
The good news is that you will know whether you passed before you leave the testing center. You will get your score when you finish the exam, and you will also get a piece of paper indicating the details of your grade. You will get feedback associated with the different scoring areas and how you performed in each of them.
Who Is Eligible
Not everyone is eligible to sit for the CEH exam. Before you go too far down the road, you should check your qualifications. Just as a starting point, you have to be at least 18 years of age. The other eligibility standards are as follows:
Anyone who has versions 1–7 of the CEH certification. The CEH certification is ANSI certified now, but early versions of the exam were available before the certification. Anyone who wants to take the ANSI-accredited certification who has the early version of the CEH certification can take the exam.
Minimum of two years of related work experience. Anyone who has the experience will have to pay a nonrefundable application fee of $100.
Have taken an EC-Council training.
If you meet these qualification standards, you can apply for the certification, along with paying the fee if it is applicable to you (if you take one of the EC-Council trainings, the fee is included). The application will be valid for three months.
Further Resources
Finally, this exam book should not be the only resource you use to prepare. You should use other exam books and study guides as well. The more diverse the exposure in terms of reading and preparation material, the better. Take your time studying; invest at least one hour per day prior to your exam date.
If you have not already read CEHv11: Certified Ethical Hacker Version 11 Study Guide (Sybex, 2021) and you're not seeing passing grades on these practice tests, it is an excellent resource to master any CEH topics causing problems. The study guide maps every official exam objective to the corresponding chapter in the book to help track your exam preparation objective by objective. There are also challenging review questions in each chapter to prepare for exam day and online test prep materials including flashcards and additional
