Note-taking process before OSCP (any IT certification exam)
I know there are lots of blogs or forums about passing and getting ready for OSCP, because of that I will not go so much deep in that process but will focus much more on my note-taking process.
During my preparation time, I have used two main applications which made that process much easier. For taking screen captures Flameshot and for taking notes Obsidian.
Flameshot
This application gives flexibility during taking screen captures. After giving shortcuts to the application for staring (I gave Win+Shift+S). Just use it! the screen of your computer will get dark and with icon, you will be able to easily select your screen part. After selecting the section of your screen, you can easily mark your main points with arrows, rectangles, or blur.
Later it is very easy just use ctrl + c and go to your obsidian and paste it! Obsidian will take your screenshot and will link it to the document you create.
Obsidian
Before Obsidian actually, I was using Cherrytree. Cherrytree uses a database as a structure. While converting Html and pdf, it was good but when I have tried to convert my notes to simple text files and markdown I have confronted with difficulty. And later I have decided to convert all my Cheerytree notes to markdown via copy and paste. This process took two weeks, firstly it was a pain but with time I looked at that situation as reading my old notes :).
The beautiful thing with Obsidian is it keeps all your notes as simple text files via using markdown. And if you want to convert your notes to another format you can easily do that with some converters. Also obsidian can convert your text files to pdf. Now I will give brief information about the main points of Obsidian.
Folders and Sub notes
During my OSCP preparation, I have solved HackTheBox retired machines (TJnull list), Offensive Security Proving ground play and practice machines, and of course lastly PWK Lab machines. Totally more than 100 machines and notes were getting bigger and bigger.
Every person can create her/his own structure but I tried to keep it simple and in the form that I can understand. So the main structure of mine was the lab platform and the box names/IP addresses.
Also, I have studied Tiberius Windows and Linux Privilege videos. I have kept these notes in OSCP obsidian subfolder.
Titles: I have created some abbreviations which I can understand as seen here. {machinename_labplatform}
Tags: Really helpful for searching your payloads which you have created before and searching them during your hacking. When clicking on a tag, a search for the tag is activated. I haven’t used but maybe you can try nested tags also. You can create tags via “#”.
Backlinks: This is one of the most powerful features of Obsidian. It has two sections; linked mentions and unlinked mentions which give you flexibility when you hacking machines. For example, while hacking you need to use Powershell for downloading a file to the victim machine and you forget the command. You can create a Powershell linked page and add there Powershell commands which you mostly use.
Graph view: This shows the graph presentation of my notes.
When we click on the spots we can see the links of that vulnerable machine attack vectors which I have created during my studies via tags and linked mentions.
For example, here I can understand that on machine Offensive Security proving ground(medjed_pg) “Medjed” machine. I can understand at first glance that I obtained information from phpinfo() file, later exploited victim machine with SQL injection and with service exploit got NT authority\system. So graph view can show us MITRE ATT&CK vectors how we got root on vulnerable machines.
Obsidian became my all-time recording application. I’m using obsidian with GitHub and also that gave me the ability to sync my notes all the time.
I have added some useful links about obsidian hope it will help your preparation process.
Related Links:
1- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Lj_YN0crc (last 10 min)
