Last week, an individual started to release solutions to certain challenges in the OSCP certification exam. This led to some discussion on Twitter and made it clear to us that there is a fair amount of misunderstanding about what’s on the exam, how we catch cheaters, how many people attempt to cheat, and what happens when they are discovered. In this post, we would like to shine some light on our certification process.

When we started out with our online training courses over 12 years ago, we made hard choices about the nature of our courses and certifications. We went against the grain, against the common certification standards, and came up with a unique certification model in the field – “Hands-on, practical certification”. Twelve years later, these choices have paid off. The industry as a whole has realized that most of the multiple choice, technical certifications do not necessarily guarantee a candidate’s technical level…and for many in the offensive security field, the OSCP has turned into a golden industry standard. This has been wonderful for certification holders as they find themselves actively recruited by employers due to the fact that they have proven themselves as being able to stand up to the stress of a hard, 24-hour exam – and still deliver a quality report.