Introduction

I’ve acquired multiple professional and intermediate level web penetration testing certifications and wanted to level up to an advanced expert level certification. After getting the PWPP certification from TCM Security, I thought it would make sense to get the next step up and get the PWPE Practical Web Pentest Expert certification. 

Course Content and Training

The course is currently $799 on their site, but I got this on Black Friday and I got 20% off, and paid I think roughly $639 with tax included already. You can learn more about their course directly from their site here.

There is only one course called “Advanced Web Hacking” that is 11+ hours long. It covers the following topics(this is straight from their site):

• Advanced Web Attacks
• Prototype Pollution
• GraphQL Attacks
• Out-of-Band Application Security Testing (OAST)
• Code Review
• Frontend JS Analysis
• OAuth
• Web Cache Poisoning

The topics I found the MOST USEFUL were the GraphQL Attacks, Code Review, Frontend JS Analysis and Prototype Pollution. The reason being that these aren’t covered in a lot of other trainings I’ve encountered, and they also require you to know JavaScript and Python. This is exactly why it’s advanced, you really need to have been hacking web apps and reading/writing code for a while. You will actually need to look at code and understand how the application works in order to develop an exploit/attack against it. In short, it’s not just black box testing, but there is white box testing involved, and Alex Olson, the instructor breaks it down very well. 

As I mentioned on some other courses I’ve reviewed, learning how to perform GraphQL API attacks is incredibly useful as more and more companies are starting to adopt it due to its resilience to high amounts of web traffic and is generally a lot faster. Prototype Pollution was also something that I wasn’t too familiar with and it was good to have a dedicated section to it where the instructor breaks things down in easily digestible bites.

My Exam Experience

If you’ve taken any of the other TCM Security courses, the exams are straightforward. You get a VPN file to download and connect to the test environment, read the Rules of Engagement, and hack away at the target within scope. The exam is 5 days. You get 3 days to hack and test the application and then you get 2 days to write the report. The exams are meant to be very realistic and there are NO FLAGS. You are required to find all the vulnerabilities in order to pass. 

The exam is significantly HARDER than the PWPP, even though I finished the lab portion of the  exam within a day and a half. The reason I say this is because there are no rabbit holes(they aren’t trying to purposely trick you) because the exam environment is built like a real application, and there are no “hints” like on some CTFs that kind of point you to the right direction. The exam is quite fair, but still difficult if you don’t follow a process. You need to go through your methodology and also apply what you learned from the course material. Since the exam is open-book, you can use any tools in your arsenal.

If you want to know more about my methodology for web application penetration tests, go here to read my other post:
https://hiddendoorsecurity.com/2025/07/05/how-to-crush-web-app-penetration-tests/

I sent in my report at the end of my second day and got my results within the following week, which showed that I passed and also got the “Early Adopter” badge, meaning I’m in the first 100 people that passed this exam(this has been out for a while now, so who knows maybe I’m the last of the 100 LOL). TCM Security usually has a fast turn around on exam results. The PNPT and PWPP took around 1 business day to get the results back. 

Realism and Practical Application

If you want to work at a reliable and functional capacity and be able to do the actual job as a web application security penetration tester or ethical hacker in general, ALL the topics covered are immediately applicable to a web application security engagement. A lot of what was taught were things I am already doing at my job as a penetration tester, but it also helped cover some knowledge and skill gaps I’ve had on certain engagements where the technology stack wasn’t familiar to me. The biggest thing you can take away is the code review and frontend JS analysis. Hackers who mostly do the black box approach, may not be used to reversing the business logic by looking at the frontend code, and I think that is a missed opportunity. This course actually taught me to find the “invisible” and “hidden” vulns that you can’t immediately see on an applications UI, such as the APIs, and also critically analyzing the web traffic. If you want to go beyond just XSS, SQL Injections and Broken Access controls, this course will definitely take you beyond that and to the next level of skill.

Conclusion

This course was a really valuable addition to my current skills and knowledge and has made me more confident in the next engagements, whether it’s another web application security penetration test or a future bounty program. I feel like my skills have expanded and so will my opportunities, just for the fact that I have additional things to look for that not a lot of other penetration testers know how to find. If you really want to level up, I highly recommend taking the PWPE Practical Web Pentest Expert from TCM Security. 

– Z333RO