Certified in The Art of Hacking

Securing customer data is often crucial when deploying and managing web applications and network infrastructure. As such, IT administrators and web developers require security knowledge and awareness in order to secure their environment. Due to this requirement, operational staff often require hands-on training and experience to identify, control and prevent organisational threats. This introductory/intermediate technical class brings together Infrastructure Security and Web Application Security into a 5-day “Art of Hacking” class designed to teach the fundamentals of hacking. This hands-on training was written to address the market need around the world for a real hands-on, practical and hacking experience that focuses on what is really needed when conducting a penetration test.

This class teaches attendees a wealth of techniques to compromise the security of various operating systems, networking devices and web application components. The class starts from the very basic and builds up to the level where attendees can not only use the tools and techniques to hack various components involved in infrastructure and web hacking, but also gain solid understanding of the concepts on which these tools are based. This class combines a formal hacking methodology with a variety of tools to teach the core principles of ethical hacking.

• Approaches attackers take when targeting organisations
• Conducting penetration testing engagements step by step and leveraging open source and publicly available tools to gain access to vulnerable systems
• Understanding how to exploit your own network before attackers do

Target Audience

• System Administrators who are interested in learning how to exploit Windows and Linux systems
• Web Developers who want to find and exploit common web application vulnerabilities
• Network Engineers who want to secure and defend their network infrastructure from malicious attacks
• Security enthusiasts new to the information security field who wants to learn the art of ethical hacking
• Security Consultants looking to relearn and refresh their foundational knowledge

Start to build the skills and confidence within your team to harden your infrastructure and web application perimeter and make your organisation a less attractive target for attackers. Trained delegates can:

• Find and exploit vulnerabilities in web applications, including those that would lead to injection attacks, authorisation and bypass authentication, malicious file uploads, and more
• Confidently articulate the intricacies of the HTTP protocol and how it can be manipulated to achieve a malicious goal
• Understand complications related to cryptography and the effect on web applications
• Understand how to use industry-standard tools, such as Burpsuite, to perform manual penetration testing against web applications
• Identify the infrastructure and frameworks underlying a web attack surface
• Use industry-standard tools, like Nmap, Hydra, and Metasploit, to perform penetration testing against your infrastructure
• Find and exploit vulnerabilities in your infrastructure, including those that would lead to initial exploitation, attack chaining, privilege escalation, persistence, and more
• Identify and recommend remediations for common misconfigurations
• Understand and explain infrastructure-based hacking methodology for both Windows and Linux and tie this to attacks across the kill chain
• Adapt their approach for different operating systems
• Understand how to tie security testing and other offensive and defensive measures back to authentic attack vectors

• Basic familiarity with Windows and Linux systems e.g. how to view a system’s IP address, installing software, file management
• Basic understanding of Network fundamentals e.g. IP addressing, knowledge of protocols such as ICMP, HTTP and DNS
• Basic understanding of HTTP fundamentals e.g. Structure of an HTTP request, HTTP method verbs, HTTP response codes

Day 1

• TCP/IP Basics
• The Art of Port Scanning
• Target Enumeration
  • Exercise - ARP Scan (Enumeration)
  • Exercise - Port Scanning (Service Enumeration)
• Brute-Forcing
  • Exercise - SNMP (Brute Force Attack)
  • Exercise - SSH
  • Exercise - Postgres
• Metasploit Basics
  • Exercise - Metasploit Basics

Day 2

• Password Cracking
  • Exercise - Password Cracking
• Hacking Unix systems
  • Exercise - Heartbleed
• Hacking Application Servers on Unix
  • Exercise - Hacking Application Servers (Tomcat)
  • Exercise - Hacking Application Servers (Jenkins)
• Hacking Third Party CMS Software
  • Exercise - PHP Serialization Exploit
  • Exercise - Wordpress Exploit

Day 3

• Windows Enumeration
  • Exercise - Windows Host Enumeration
• Client-Side Attacks
  • Exercise - Hacking Third Party Software
• Hacking Application Servers on Windows
  • Exercise - Hacking Application Servers on Windows
• Post Exploitation
  • Exercise - Windows Hacking - Password Extraction
• Hacking Windows Domains
  • Exercise - Hacking Windows Domains

Day 4

• Understanding the HTTP protocol
  • Exercise - Burp Demo
  • Exercise - Manipulating Headers
• Information gathering
  • Exercise - Information Gathering
• Username Enumeration & Faulty Password Reset
  • Exercise - Username Enumeration
  • Exercise - Password Brute-force Attack
  • Exercise - Forgotten Password Functionality
• SSL/TLS related vulnerabilities
  • Exercise - TLS
• Authorisation Bypasses
  • Exercise - Authorization Bypass via Parameter Manipulation
  • Exercise - Authorization Bypass
  • Exercise - Arbitrary File Download

Day 5

• Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
  • Exercise - XSS (reflective)
  • Exercise - XSS Session Hijacking
  • Exercise - Stored XSS
• Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
  • Exercise - CSRF (Demo)
• SQL Injection
  • Exercise - SQLite (Manual and slap based exploitation)
• XML External Entity (XXE) Attacks
  • Exercise - XXE
• Insecure File Uploads
  • Exercise - Insecure File Upload

Exam:

• Online proctored exam taken in class on the final day of the course
• Duration - 70 minutes
• Questions 50, multiple choice (4 multiple choice answers only 1 of which is correct)
• Pass Mark 50%

Results: Candidates will receive individual emails to access their AMPG candidate portal, typically available two weeks post exam. If you experience any issues, please contact the APMG technical help desk on 01494 4520450