Vulnerabilities and Exploitation
Discover, assess, and exploit common vulnerabilities responsibly.
1. Vulnerability Fundamentals
CVEs, CVSS, exploitability, and responsible disclosure.
2. Reconnaissance and Enumeration
Service discovery, banner grabbing, and enumeration strategies.
3. Vulnerability Scanning
Using nmap scripts, Nessus/OpenVAS concepts, validating findings.
4. Exploitation Basics
Metasploit fundamentals, exploit modules, payloads, and sessions.
5. Lab: Exploit a Known CVE
End-to-end exploitation of a lab target with a known vulnerability.
6. Post-Exploitation
Privilege escalation concepts, persistence, credential harvesting.
7. Lab: Privilege Escalation
Exploit misconfigurations to escalate privileges on a target.
8. Reporting and Remediation
Writing effective findings, risk ratings, and remediation guidance.
9. Assignment: Vulnerability Assessment
Perform a scoped assessment and deliver a professional report.
10. Quiz: Vulns and Exploitation
Assess knowledge of scanning, exploitation, and reporting.
11. Scoping and Rules of Engagement
Define boundaries, legal constraints, and test objectives before vulnerability and exploitation work begins.
12. Asset Discovery and Target Prioritization
Map attack surface and prioritize targets based on business criticality and exposure.
13. Lab: Attack Surface Mapping
Build a complete target inventory and classify components by attack value and risk.
14. Web Vulnerability Fundamentals
Cover common web issues such as injection, auth flaws, and insecure configurations.
15. Network Service Vulnerability Patterns
Understand common weaknesses in exposed services, outdated software, and weak protocols.
16. Lab: Service Misconfiguration Exploitation
Exploit controlled service misconfigurations and document impact and remediation.
17. Credential and Authentication Attack Basics
Explore credential attacks, weak auth patterns, and effective defensive controls.
18. Local Privilege Escalation Techniques
Understand common local privilege escalation vectors in Linux and Windows labs.
19. Lab: Credential Abuse Scenarios
Practice controlled credential attack simulations and mitigation verification.
20. Exploit Validation and False Positive Reduction
Validate scanner findings and distinguish exploitable issues from non-impacting noise.
21. Post-Exploitation Data Handling Ethics
Handle evidence safely, minimize impact, and follow strict ethical handling practices.
22. Lab: End-to-End Validation Workflow
Take a finding from scan to exploit validation, then document fix and retest evidence.
23. Risk-Based Remediation Planning
Translate technical findings into remediation plans aligned to business risk and effort.
24. Lab: Professional Report Authoring
Write a complete assessment report with evidence, risk ratings, and actionable recommendations.
25. Capstone: Full Vulnerability Assessment Engagement
Perform a scoped engagement from reconnaissance to reporting and remediation validation in a controlled environment.