IMHO the holy grail of certs would be the CCIE, just because of what is required to obtain it. But it's still not going to make you a 4 star hacker unless you only plan to hack Cisco stuff.

Like Cheyenne said, anyone can pass a test, but you need to understand the material, not just memorize it. I know people who have an assload of certs who probably couldn't configure a home LAN without 2 books and 3 people helping. I also know a highschool dropout who knows Linux as well as Torvalds (well, almost as well...).