Week 1
Source: Dev.to
Disclaimer: The tools and techniques discussed in this blog are strictly for educational purposes. Do not use this information for illegal activities.
Course Overview
This week marks the start of the Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing course at campus. The goal of the class isn’t just to teach us how to run automated scripts (e.g., becoming a script kiddie), but to actually understand how to find vulnerabilities, escalate privileges, and cover our tracks. The core of the course is a hands‑on penetration testing project that runs throughout the semester.
Ground Rules
- Collaboration vs. Cheating: Working together is encouraged, but outright copying is a hard no.
- Attendance: Arriving more than 30 minutes late means you are locked out of the class and marked absent.
- Hard Rule: DDoS attacks against the targets are strictly forbidden.
- Reporting: Everything we do has to be documented. This blog serves as my ongoing journal for the project. At the end of the course, we must submit a final Penetration Testing Report and present our findings.
Lab Environment
You cannot do penetration testing safely on your main host OS; an isolated virtual machine is required. For our lab, we are using VirtualBox (or VMware) to run Kali Linux.
Minimum VM Requirements
- RAM: 4 GB
- Storage: 40 GB (running this on an SSD is highly recommended so it doesn’t lag)
- CPU: 2 vCPUs
Once the VM is set up and running, the baseline environment is ready.