Ethical Hacking

Course Description

The training consists of two main sections. The first one shows the exploit writing process and the other one is about web application security. The purpose of this training is to give not just an overview but also to teach the students how to find vulnerabilities and write actual exploits. Using this knowledge, they can verify the security of applications during their ethical hacking and pentesting assignments.

The exploit writing part of the training helps students to learn how to find vulnerabilities using fuzzers for example and how to verify if the bug is exploitable or not. And if the answer is yes, it is exploitable than how to write a working exploit to take advantage of the vulnerability and how to evade different types of protections.

As there are differences between the platforms, we are giving instructions and labs to develop and exploit not just on Windows but on Linux, as well. The order of the sections and labs are in a given order and each one of them builds upon the knowledge of the previous step. So, it will happen as a process not just immediately and it helps the students to follow the training.

The second part of the training called Web application security helps the students to quickly evaluate web applications, find and expose vulnerabilities. Each section has its own hands-on lab. These practical tests show what happens behind the scenes so the students will understand what happens and not just click through an automated pentesting application. We put emphasis on the basics and technical details. We use automated tools also to speed up the processes, of course. But we lay the foundation so the trainees will understand why an attack works, how it works and what caused the problem.

Training Objectives

At the end of the training participants:

• Follow the complete exploit writing process: find vulnerabilities with techniques such as fuzzing, verify whether a bug is exploitable and write a working exploit for it.
• Write stack-based buffer overflow exploits on 32-bit Windows and on 64-bit Linux, and evade protections such as Data Execution Prevention (DEP).
• Exploit format string vulnerabilities and turn the attack into a Metasploit module to make it automated and repeatable.
• Use Meterpreter in penetration testing assignments.
• Exploit the virtual function table mechanism and understand its relation to Control Flow Guard.
• Find and exploit the most common web application vulnerabilities: reflected, stored and DOM based cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF) and session fixation.
• Perform command injection, JWT and prototype pollution attacks, and take advantage of OAuth 2.0 authentication vulnerabilities.
• Expose logical errors such as Insecure Direct Object References (IDOR), deliver direct and indirect prompt injection attacks against Large Language Model (LLM) based applications, and exploit error based, boolean based blind and time based blind SQL injection.

Prerequisites

General Linux and Microsoft Windows system administration, basic knowledge of web applications and related protocols, basic understanding of SQL databases. Basic programming skills and understanding of programming.