Black Hat Hacker Course

Lesson 1 • Legal and Ethical Boundaries

Covers authorization requirements, responsible disclosure norms, and professional ethics. Ensures students understand boundaries before executing any technique.

Lesson 2 • Attacker Mindset and Threat Modeling

Defines adversarial thinking and how attackers prioritize targets. Anchors the chapter by framing all subsequent techniques within a goal-oriented attacker perspective.

Lesson 3 • Offensive Security Methodology Overview

Maps the full attack lifecycle from reconnaissance to reporting. Gives students a repeatable process framework applied in every subsequent chapter.

Lesson 4 • Core Security Concepts and Terminology

Introduces confidentiality, integrity, availability, and related primitives. Provides shared vocabulary used throughout the entire course.

Lesson 1 • Active Reconnaissance and Scanning

Introduces direct interaction with target infrastructure to enumerate live hosts and services. Connects passive findings to actionable network maps.

Lesson 2 • Web Application Fingerprinting

Identifies web technologies, frameworks, and entry points on target applications. Feeds directly into later web exploitation chapters.

Lesson 3 • Network Topology Mapping

Reconstructs internal and external network architecture from enumeration data. Enables informed lateral movement planning in later chapters.

Lesson 4 • Reconnaissance Automation and Tooling

Introduces scripted and tool-assisted recon workflows for efficiency and repeatability. Prepares students to manage large-scope engagements systematically.

Lesson 1 • Common Vulnerability Classes

Surveys injection, misconfiguration, authentication bypass, and logic flaws. Equips students to recognize and exploit the most prevalent weakness categories.

Lesson 2 • Vulnerability Scanning and Assessment

Covers automated and manual methods for identifying weaknesses in target systems. Bridges reconnaissance output to exploitable findings.

Lesson 3 • Using Public Exploit Frameworks

Teaches structured use of exploit frameworks to execute known vulnerabilities safely. Connects vulnerability findings to controlled exploitation workflows.

Lesson 4 • Exploit Development Fundamentals

Introduces memory layout, shellcode concepts, and basic exploit structure. Provides the theoretical base for hands-on exploitation in subsequent sections.

Lesson 1 • Injection Attacks in Depth

Covers SQL, command, LDAP, and template injection with hands-on exploitation. Builds on vulnerability class knowledge from the previous chapter.

Lesson 2 • Cross-Site Scripting and Client-Side Attacks

Explores reflected, stored, and DOM-based XSS alongside CSRF and clickjacking. Shows how client-side flaws escalate to credential theft and account takeover.

Lesson 3 • Authentication and Session Attacks

Targets login mechanisms, session tokens, and credential storage weaknesses. Demonstrates how authentication failures lead to full account compromise.

Lesson 4 • Advanced Web Attack Techniques

Covers SSRF, XXE, deserialization, and HTTP request smuggling. Prepares students for complex, chained web vulnerabilities found in mature applications.

Lesson 1 • SSL and TLS Downgrade Attacks

Demonstrates stripping and downgrade techniques that force insecure cipher negotiation. Shows how encrypted channels can be compromised through protocol manipulation.

Lesson 2 • Network Pivoting and Tunneling

Teaches routing attack traffic through compromised hosts to reach segmented networks. Prepares students for multi-hop lateral movement in later chapters.

Lesson 3 • Traffic Interception and Analysis

Teaches packet capture, traffic decryption, and credential extraction from network streams. Connects protocol weaknesses to actionable credential and data harvesting.

Lesson 4 • Network Protocol Weaknesses

Analyzes exploitable design flaws in common protocols such as ARP, DNS, and DHCP. Establishes the protocol-level foundation for all subsequent network attacks.

Lesson 1 • Lateral Movement Strategies

Uses harvested credentials and trust relationships to move between hosts. Expands attacker control across the target environment systematically.

Lesson 2 • Credential Harvesting and Dumping

Extracts credentials from memory, disk, and authentication stores on compromised hosts. Feeds harvested credentials into lateral movement and domain attacks.

Lesson 3 • Establishing Persistence Mechanisms

Installs covert footholds that survive reboots and user logoffs. Ensures continued access for long-term engagement simulation.

Lesson 4 • Privilege Escalation Techniques

Identifies and exploits misconfigurations and vulnerabilities to gain elevated system rights. Builds directly on initial access established in prior exploitation chapters.

Lesson 1 • Payload Obfuscation and Encoding

Applies encoding, encryption, and code transformation to defeat signature detection. Directly addresses the detection mechanisms analyzed in the previous section.

Lesson 2 • Living-off-the-Land Techniques

Leverages built-in OS tools and trusted binaries to execute attacker objectives. Minimizes the attacker footprint by avoiding custom malware deployment.

Lesson 3 • Understanding Defensive Detection Mechanisms

Analyzes how antivirus, EDR, and SIEM systems detect malicious activity. Provides the defensive knowledge required to design effective evasion strategies.

Lesson 4 • Network Traffic Evasion

Disguises command-and-control traffic as legitimate protocols and services. Ensures persistent communication channels survive network-layer inspection.

Lesson 1 • Full Red Team Operation Planning

Synthesizes all course skills into a structured adversary simulation engagement plan. Prepares students to lead end-to-end red team operations professionally.

Lesson 2 • Cloud and Hybrid Environment Attacks

Extends attack techniques to cloud IAM, storage, and compute misconfigurations. Addresses the modern enterprise attack surface beyond on-premises infrastructure.

Lesson 3 • Social Engineering and Phishing Campaigns

Designs and executes pretexting, spear-phishing, and vishing operations. Demonstrates how human-layer attacks complement technical exploitation chains.

Lesson 4 • Command-and-Control Infrastructure

Builds resilient, covert C2 infrastructure for long-term operation management. Enables sustained red team operations without detection or takedown.