Week 01: Course Setup and Kali Linux Installation
Disclaimer: The tools and techniques discussed in this blog are strictly for educational purposes. Do not use this information for illegal activities.
This week marks the start of the Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing course at campus. The goal of this class isn't just to teach us how to run automated scripts (eg: becoming a script kiddie), but to actually understand how to find vulnerabilities, escalate privileges, and cover our tracks.
Before getting into the technical stuff, we went over the ground rules for the semester.
Class Rules & Expectations
The administration made a few things very clear on day one:
- 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.
The Main Project
The core of this course is a hands-on penetration testing project that runs throughout the semester.
- The Targets: We will be testing web apps, client/server applications, and a specific cloud environment prepared for the class.
- 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 have to submit a final Penetration Testing Report and present our findings.
Lab Setup: Kali Linux
You cannot do penetration testing safely on your main host OS. You need an isolated virtual machine.
For our lab environment, 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.
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