How to Prepare for CEH v13: An 8-Week Study Plan

CEH v13 has 20 modules and a 4-hour, 125-question exam, which is a lot to cover without a plan. This 8-week schedule assumes about 10 hours a week. No plan guarantees a pass, and exam details can change, so use it as a structure and check the current format on EC-Council's CEH page (read November 5, 2026).

Before You Start: Are You Eligible, and Are You Ready?

EC-Council lists no fixed prerequisite for CEH, but recommends at least two years of IT security experience. You can become eligible by attending official training (through a training center, online or at a partner college) or by applying with relevant experience. Freshers usually take the training route. If networking and Linux are new to you, spend a week on networking basics and Kali Linux first; the rest of the plan will go faster.

Weeks 1 and 2: Reconnaissance, Scanning and Enumeration

Cover modules 1 to 5. Build your lab and practice the loop: discover hosts, scan services, enumerate, note results. Write down the commands that worked.

• nmap -sn to find live hosts, nmap -sV for services
• Read Nmap for beginners and repeat each scan yourself
• End of week 2: explain the difference between scanning and enumeration without notes

Weeks 3 and 4: Getting Access, Malware and Traffic

Cover modules 6 to 8. Work through password attacks, privilege escalation and packet analysis in your lab only. Capture traffic in Wireshark and answer questions about it, such as which host talked to which and over what protocol.

Weeks 5 and 6: People, Evasion, Web and Databases

Cover modules 9 to 15. The web modules carry the most hands-on value: run Burp Suite against a deliberately vulnerable application, try each OWASP Top 10 category, and see how SQL injection behaves. OWASP Top 10 for beginners and SQL injection explained go with this stage.

Week 7: Wireless, Mobile, IoT, Cloud and Cryptography

Cover modules 16 to 20. These are the most reading-heavy. Make one-page summaries, because these topics show up as short factual questions on the exam. Our module-by-module guide is a good checklist.

Week 8: Timed Practice

• 125 questions in 4 hours is about 1 minute 55 seconds per question. Practice answering at that pace.
• Take at least two full timed question sets, then review every wrong answer and write the reason you got it wrong.
• Mark and skip slow questions; return to them at the end.
• Rest the day before. A tired mind misreads questions.

If you plan the practical exam (6 hours, 20 challenges), add timed lab sessions too. See CEH Practical explained.

Common Mistakes

• Reading all 20 modules once and never opening a tool.
• Memorizing port numbers and commands with no lab to attach them to.
• Skipping the modules you find boring; they still produce questions.
• Treating a practice-test score as a prediction. It shows gaps, not a result.