1.1 Current Exam Facts

The KLCP Exam at a Glance

The Kali Linux Certified Professional (KLCP) credential validates your knowledge of Kali Linux itself: where it came from, how it is built, how it is installed and configured, and how to manage it day to day. It is the certification attached to OffSec's PEN-103 course, Kali Linux Revealed, and it is a knowledge exam, not a hands-on hacking exam. Nobody will ask you to exploit a target or pop a shell. You will be asked whether you know that zsh has been the default interactive shell since Kali 2020.4, that network services such as SSH are disabled by default, and that kali-rolling is the primary package repository.

Exam Facts Table

Delivery, Proctoring, and Pacing

The exam is delivered through ClassMarker, a browser-based testing platform. You do not install Kali or any special software to sit the exam; you need a computer with a modern browser and a stable internet connection, and you must follow the proctoring rules OffSec communicates when you schedule. Treat the session as fully supervised: no reference materials, no second screen, no leaving the exam window.

Pacing is generous but not unlimited. Eighty questions in 90 minutes gives you roughly 67 seconds per question. Most KLCP items are direct recall — you either know that the default live-image credentials are kali/kali or you do not — so a well-prepared candidate usually finishes with time to spare. Use the leftover minutes to review any questions you flagged as uncertain rather than second-guessing answers you knew cold. Read each stem carefully for qualifiers like not, default, and since which release; OffSec loves testing exactly the defaults people half-remember.

The Closed-Book Trap

The single most dangerous assumption you can bring to KLCP is that it works like an open-book trivia check. It does not. The exam is closed-book: no notes, no printed cheat sheets, no second browser tab holding the Kali Linux Revealed PDF, and no man pages. Every fact must come from memory — exact command flags, file paths under /etc, repository names, default credentials, release dates. If your study plan is 'I can look that up when it comes up,' you will fail. Your job during preparation is to convert look-up facts into recall facts.

Results, Certificates, and Retakes

Results are immediate: when you submit, you learn at once whether you passed. The threshold is a flat 80 percent — 64 correct answers out of 80 — with no partial credit and no curve. One honest caveat: OffSec's published KLCP Exam Guide states the question count and the time limit but not the passing percentage, so treat 80% as the figure consistently reported by candidates and training providers rather than as a quoted OffSec policy. A passing result earns a digital certificate that you claim through Accredible, OffSec's credentialing platform; the Accredible badge is verifiable and shareable on LinkedIn and resumes. If you do not pass, there is no automatic free retake: you contact orders@offsec.com to purchase another attempt, then reschedule through the normal exam flow.

What It Costs — and What Is Free

The training and the exam are priced separately. The PEN-103 Kali Linux Revealed course is free on portal.offsec.com (the older kali.training site is retired), including the book content the exam is built from. The exam attempt is what costs money, with one important exception: an attempt is included with OffSec's Learn Fundamentals and Learn One subscriptions (Learn Unlimited, which carried unlimited attempts, was withdrawn from sale after 31 December 2025). If you hold one of those, you can schedule KLCP without buying anything extra; with a Course + Cert Bundle the KLCP attempt is a separate purchase.

Facts to Memorize Before Exam Day

Because the exam is closed-book recall, these high-yield defaults and history items should be automatic for you:

• zsh is the default interactive shell since Kali 2020.4 on desktop (amd64/i386) and cloud images — ARM, container, WSL and NetHunter images still default to Bash, and adduser still creates new accounts with Bash; dash remains /bin/sh for POSIX scripts.
• Xfce is the default desktop environment.
• Live images since 2020.1 log in as non-root user kali with password kali.
• kali-rolling is the primary repository; kali-dev and kali-bleeding-edge also exist.
• Kali is based on Debian Testing and follows a rolling release model.
• Network services (SSH, Apache, PostgreSQL) are disabled by default.
• Kali's first release was March 2013, developed by OffSec as the successor to BackTrack.
• Kali packages 600+ security tools; the default install ships the kali-linux-default subset of them.

Every item on that list is a plausible exam question. Treat them as the floor of your memorization, not the ceiling.

How Exam Questions Are Written

KLCP items are written directly from the book's text, which has two practical consequences. First, wording matters: when the book says kali-rolling is the primary repository, an exam distractor will offer kali-dev or kali-bleeding-edge, and only precise memory separates them. Second, no question requires knowledge from outside the book — if you have genuinely mastered all 12 chapters, there are no trick externals waiting for you. Expect three recurring question shapes on the ClassMarker exam: direct fact recall ('which shell has been the default interactive shell since Kali 2020.4'), negative recall ('which of the following network services is NOT disabled by default' — read these stems twice, because a missed not flips the correct answer), and scenario recall ('you boot a live image built after 2020.1 — which credentials do you use'). This guide's quizzes deliberately rotate through all three shapes so the real exam's phrasing feels familiar rather than surprising.