It’s been a while since I did a certification review, so to change that, today we’re going to talk about the best wifi hacking certification, the:
Oh no wait, this is the most famous one, but not the best.
Now that’s right. Let’s talk about the Certified WiFiChallenge Professional, in other words, the CWP.
What is the CWP?
The CWP is a certification born from the WiFiChallenge Lab project. For those who don’t know it, it’s a completely virtual wifi hacking lab, meaning the access points are totally virtualized and you don’t need to buy a network card. In other words: “you have a virtual machine with many wifi networks available inside”.
It’s a project that was initially presented at RootedCon 2022 and gradually grew until even reaching Las Vegas at Defcon 2023 with the talk “Advanced WiFi Attacks for Red Team Professionals” presented at DEF CON 31.
Following this journey, Raúl Calvo, the creator of WiFiChallenge, decided to create a course and exam to teach wifi hacking, and that’s basically how this certification was born.
Syllabus
According to the CWP’s own page, the course covers the following topics:
- Wi-Fi Networks Theory
- WiFiChallenge Lab - First Steps
- Linux Fundamentals - How to Use Linux
- Wi-Fi Networks on Linux
- Offensive Wi-Fi Recon
- Wi-Fi Attacks - OPN (Open Public Networks)
- Wi-Fi Attacks - OWE (Opportunistic Wireless Encryption)
- Wi-Fi Attacks - WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)
- Wi-Fi Attacks - PSK (Pre Shared Key)
- Wi-Fi Attacks - SAE (Simultaneous Authentication of Equals)
- Wi-Fi Attacks - MGT Recon
- Wi-Fi Attacks - MGT
- Wi-Fi Attacks - Detection
- Advanced Wi-Fi Enterprise Attacks aka Indirect MGT Attacks
- Real World Experience
- Wi-Fi Network Hardening
You can get more information about each topic on the official CWP course page. The point is that in the course you learn the theory and practice of all existing wifi types today. What’s truly interesting is the practical part thanks to its support from the WiFiChallenge lab, which is divided into challenges in Capture The Flag (CTF) format:
As you learn in the CWP course, you’ll be putting everything into practice in the lab, which makes the course quite dynamic and entertaining.
In addition to all this, there’s a particularly interesting detail that you don’t usually see in any other certification, and that is the course is completely available in Spanish. When you buy it, you can choose between Spanish and English:
So there’s no language barrier with this certification. Also keep this detail in mind if you decide to buy it, don’t choose the wrong version, although you can always contact support and they’ll modify it without any problem.
Course Format
The course consists of both video and text sections:
The content is mainly taught in text, however, when it comes to the practical part you have both options, video and text:
Additionally, as you progress you have quizzes in test format that will test you on what you’ve learned in each section:
Finally, the course also provides access to private channels within the WiFiChallenge Discord server so you have a place where you can ask any questions and share space with other people who are also taking the certification or have already taken it.
Comparison with OffSec’s OSWP
I don’t want to extend too much in this section because there’s a clear winner. If you’re a bit up to date with OffSec’s current situation and their certifications, you’ll know perfectly well that, at least in the case of OSWP, their certification is quite obsolete and doesn’t get updated, plus the course and lab themselves are quite inferior to those of CWP and WiFiChallenge.
In fact, at the beginning of the article I showed the OSWP certification as a joke, but now I’ll show exactly what I’ve done in their course:
Only the Copyright xD.
What I’m getting at is that CWP teaches you everything you need to know about wifi, because this isn’t about passing certifications, this is about learning, and that’s exactly CWP’s purpose. If I had only studied the OSWP syllabus, yes, I probably would have passed the certification, but the moment you put me in a real environment, I probably wouldn’t have performed, or wouldn’t have had the tools to perform and update myself.
On the other hand, CWP even has a section dedicated to real-world experience and how things can change compared to a lab:
For these kinds of things, I think CWP is quite superior to any other wifi hacking certification on the market today.
Exam
When you buy the CWP, a free exam attempt is included. Although you can also take the exam without buying the course, you can get more information on the official CWP exam page.
There isn’t much to say about the exam. You connect via SSH to a machine and from that machine you have to compromise at least 4 of the 5 APs available in the environment. For this task, you have a time limit of 6 hours. After those 6 hours, you’ll need to create a write-up style report on how you compromised the different APs. To submit this report, you have a 24-hour limit once the practical part of the exam is finished.
After submission, your report will be reviewed and whether you pass or not, you’ll get completely personalized feedback on how you did. Even if you do well and pass, you’ll receive comments in case you can improve something even more.
Conclusion
And that’s it, I think I’ve talked about practically everything relevant and points to consider when deciding if this certification can help your professional development. Whether yes or no, what’s clear is that it’s the best wifi hacking course and certification available today, not only because of everything I’ve mentioned, from which everyone will draw their own conclusions, but because I personally know the person behind the course and I know firsthand the work, effort, and care they’ve put into this project. For this, and everything else mentioned, I recommend the Certified WiFiChallenge Professional (CWP).