This course turns the web security skills from the previous course into a full, professional penetration testing methodology. You will follow a complete engagement end to end: setting up a legal authorisation and scope, reconnaissance, vulnerability analysis, exploitation, password and access testing, post-exploitation, and writing a report a real client could act on.
Every technical idea is taught at the level of principles and safe, structured practice, always inside your own authorised lab or a legitimate training platform such as TryHackMe or HackTheBox, never against a real, unauthorised target. The legal framework (including the relevant articles of the French Penal Code) and professional ethics run through every chapter, because in this field, permission and documentation are just as important as technical skill.
By the end, you will have produced a full fictional engagement, Project Lighthouse, mirroring exactly the steps, paperwork and deliverables of a real professional penetration test, and you will be ready for the final course of this track, where everything comes together as an apprentice white hat.
What you will learn
- Explain the legal and ethical framework of ethical hacking, including the relevant French Penal Code articles
- Write a penetration test authorisation and scope document
- Perform reconnaissance using OSINT, DNS enumeration, port scanning and banner grabbing
- Use public vulnerability databases and automated scanners, with a clear understanding of their limits
- Prioritise vulnerabilities using severity, exposure, business value and confidence
- Describe how exploitation frameworks, shells and pivoting work, strictly within an authorised lab
- Explain how password hashing, salting, and credential-reuse attacks work, and how to defend against them
- Recognise privilege escalation, persistence and lateral movement patterns, from both an offensive and a defensive viewpoint
- Write and present a complete, professional, honest penetration test report
Prerequisites
Having completed "Web Application Pentesting: Understanding Vulnerabilities", or already knowing common web weaknesses, basic use of Burp Suite, and the fundamentals of networks and Linux.