We’ve just launched kAIPTA (Certified AI Penetration Testing Associate), an associate-level certification focused entirely on AI application penetration testing. In this blog post, I’ll share some practical tips to help you prepare for the exam, along with useful resources to study and practice beforehand.
The kAIPTA exam is hands-on and scenario-driven. During the assessment, you’ll be given four different AI applications to pentest. This is not traditional web application penetration testing—you won’t be testing for XSS, SQL injection, or similar issues. The entire assessment focuses on AI systems, their behavior, and how they can be exploited from a red-team perspective. To succeed, your preparation should be centered on AI-specific attack techniques and adversarial thinking.
You can find the complete and up-to-date syllabus on the kAIPTA certification page. The syllabus outlines all the domains covered in the exam and the weight assigned to each, and it should be your primary reference when planning your preparation.
The four AI applications provided in the exam are backed by real large language models (LLM). This means the behavior you observe is not hardcoded or manually controlled. You should expect natural variation in responses, and you may not always get the exact output you anticipate on your attempts. This is normal when testing real AI systems and is part of what the exam is designed to evaluate.
When you start testing an application, always keep the intended scenario in mind. For example, if an AI application is presented as a web hosting customer support assistant, you should treat it exactly as that. A customer support agent is not expected to perform tasks like programming, image generation, or unrelated creative work. Testing how and when the AI can be pushed outside its intended role is a key part of the assessment.
In kAIPTA, your prompt is your ultimate weapon. There are no scanners or automated tools—everything depends on how well you can communicate, manipulate, and reframe instructions. Creativity matters. Subtle wording changes, reframing user intent, and carefully constructed prompts often make the difference between a failed attempt and a successful exploit. Thinking like an adversary and experimenting with language is essential.
If you are completely new to AI penetration testing and don’t have much prior experience, I strongly recommend studying and practicing before attempting the exam. While kAIPTA is an associate-level certification, it expects you to be comfortable thinking adversarially about AI systems and understanding how they fail under intentional misuse.
Begin by studying the core areas from the syllabus, especially prompt injection, instruction hierarchy manipulation, sensitive information disclosure, insecure output handling, overreliance on AI-generated responses, and risks introduced by tools or plugins. These topics should be understood conceptually and practically—reading alone is not enough. You need hands-on experimentation to build intuition.
You can start practicing and building your understanding using the following free and publicly available resources:
-
Gandalf AI – A prompt injection challenge game that helps you practice bypassing AI restrictions using creative and adversarial prompts.
https://gandalf.lakera.ai/ -
Prompt Airlines – A prompt injection and jailbreak challenge platform focused on real-world AI misuse scenarios.
https://promptairlines.com/ -
AI Goat – An intentionally vulnerable AI application designed to practice prompt injection and AI exploitation techniques.
https://github.com/dhammon/ai-goat -
Bugcrowd – AI Vulnerability Deep Dive: Prompt Injection – A practical deep dive into prompt injection attacks, real-world impact, and attacker mindset.
https://www.bugcrowd.com/blog/ai-vulnerability-deep-dive-prompt-injection/ -
Prompt Engineering Guide – Adversarial Risks – A well-structured guide explaining adversarial prompting, risks, and common failure patterns in LLM-based systems.
https://www.promptingguide.ai/risks/adversarial -
LLM Security – A curated collection of LLM security concepts, risks, attack techniques, and references useful for AI red teamers.
https://llmsecurity.net/
While practicing, it’s important to avoid a common mistake: don’t assume the same prompt, payload, or exploit will work everywhere. AI systems are non-deterministic, and the exam challenges will not mirror any public labs exactly. Practice is meant to sharpen your ability to adapt, experiment, and reason in real time—not to collect reusable prompts. The stronger your fundamentals, the easier it will be to handle unfamiliar scenarios during the exam.
When you attempt the exam, the portal will deploy the AI applications for you and provide the necessary details to begin testing. In some cases, you may see a provisioning status in the portal—this simply means the backend servers are still being set up. Wait until the status changes to running before you start your assessment and testing.
Be mindful of the exam timing. The actual assessment time is 4 hours, with an additional 30 minutes allocated for server provisioning, giving you a total window of 4.5 hours. Make sure you also use the VPN profile and credentials provided with your exam voucher, as access to the exam environment depends on it.
Finally, stay focused, think like a red teamer, and don’t panic if something doesn’t work on the first attempt—iteration is part of AI penetration testing. Best of luck with your kAIPTA exam, and enjoy the process of exploring and breaking AI systems responsibly.
