Certified Desktop Application Pentester
(CDAPen)
The Certified Blue Teamer (CBTeamer) exam is an intermediate-level blue teaming and incident response exam designed to assess a candidate’s ability to investigate, correlate, and interpret a multi-stage intrusion within a modern Windows Active Directory enterprise. The exam simulates a realistic compromise against a mid-sized organization, where the attacker begins by exploiting public-facing infrastructure and gradually pivots deeper into the internal network.
Note: The exam details will be sent to you on/before XX December, 2025.
- Practical
- 4 Hours
- Online
- On-demand
- Real world pentesting scenarios
£250
Who should take this exam?
CDAPen is intended to be taken by pentesters, application security architects, SOC analysts, red and blue team members and any security enthusiasts, who want to evaluate and advance their knowledge.
What is the format of the exam?
CDAPen is an intense 4 hour long practical exam. It requires candidates to solve a number of challenges, identify and exploit various vulnerabilities and obtain flags. The exam can be taken online, anytime (on-demand) and from anywhere. Candidates will need to connect to the exam VPN server to access the vulnerable applications.
Note: While all our professional exams are 4 hour exams, with CBTeamer we have allowed an extra hour.
What is the pass criteria for the exam?
The pass criteria are as follows:
- Candidates scoring over 60% marks will be deemed to have successfully passed the exam.
- Candidates scoring over 75% marks will be deemed to have passed with merit.
What is the experience needed to take the exam?
This is an intermediate-level exam. Candidates should have prior knowledge and experience in desktop application pentesting. They should have an understanding of common desktop application security-related topics such as the OWASP Desktop App Security Top 10 Risks, commonly identified security misconfigurations, and best security practices. They must demonstrate their practical knowledge of desktop application pentesting by completing tasks that involve identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities created in the exam environment to simulate real-world scenarios.
Note: As this is an intermediate-level exam, a minimum of two years of professional pentesting/bug-bounty experience is recommended.
What will the candidates get?
On completing the exam, each candidate will receive:
- A certificate with their pass/fail and merit status.
- The certificate will contain a certificate number, which can be used by anyone to validate the certificate.
What is the exam retake policy?
Candidates who fail the exam are allowed 1 free exam retake within the exam fees.
What are the benefits of this exam?
The certificate will allow candidates to demonstrate their understanding of desktop application security topics. This will help them advance in their career.
How long is the certificate valid for?
The certificate does not have an expiration date. However, the passing certificate will include details of the exam, such as the exam version and the date. As the exam is updated over time, candidates should retake the newer version as per their convenience.
Will you provide any training that can be taken before the exam?
Being an independent certifying authority, we do not provide any training for the exam. Candidates should carefully go over each topic listed in the syllabus and make sure they have an adequate understanding, required experience and practical knowledge of these topics. Further, the following independent resources can be used to prepare for the exams.
Learning Resources
Exam Syllabus
Identification and Exploitation of OWASP Desktop Application Security Top 10 Vulnerabilities
Injection Attacks
- SQL Injection
- NoSQL Injection
Authentication-related Vulnerabilities
- Client-side authentication bypass
- Password reset attacks
Authorization and Session Management related flaws –
- Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR)
- Parameter Manipulation attacks