Applied Ethical Hacking and Rules of Engagement

Welcome to the most complete Ethical Hacking and Threat Hunting course available online, where both topics in offensive security, as well as defensive security, are professionally covered. This course includes two crash courses about Linux and Python as well.

The following seven pillars constitute the foundation of this life-changing course:

1- Ethical Hacking
Learn how to think and act like a hacker and work with various techniques and tools to achieve this goal. As an ethical hacker at the end of this course, you will be able to help your customers mitigate various attack vectors and their corresponding details practically based on various security standards and best practices. Also, you will learn how to execute various ethical hacking phases as Reconnaissance, Scanning, Gaining Access, Maintaining Access, Clearing Tracks, and others.

2- Penetration Testing
Learn how to hack easy to hard real-world simulated virtual machines on HackTheBox Live Hacking! using unique exploits, tactics, and techniques. Learn the art of intrusion with these CTFs (Capture the Flags) which will help you in the future on every real work project.
Also work on pentest methods in web, network, vulnerability assessment workflows, and “Defense in Depth” best practices which will help you hack like black-hat hackers, defend or secure them like security experts and harden your corporate environment against malicious actors.

3- Red-Teaming techniques and tactics

Learn beginner to advanced pentesting techniques. Learn how to think and act like threat actors to stop them at various phases of the attack life cycle.
MITRE ATT&CK Framework: reconnaissance, initial foothold, lateral movement, privilege escalation, command and control, active directory attacks, Linux, and mac os x malware and attack techniques.
Learn scripting languages for the Cobalt Strike Framework and other red-team engagement frameworks to perform development and operations on them.
Learn how to develop your C2 infrastructure to avoid detection by blue teams and SOCs during red team operations.

4- Elastic Stack Wazuh Manager (SIEM)
Learn how to set up a complete SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) using Elastic Stack (formerly ELK Stack) using Wazuh Manager. Also, learn how to ingest various log formats from different log sources such as Linux and Windows servers, Fortigate firewall appliances, and so on. You will learn how to activate different functionalities (capabilities) of the Wazuh manager such as vulnerability monitoring, File Integrity Monitoring, CIS Hardening Benchmark Monitoring, and much more. Also, you will learn how the underlying decoders and rules are programmed to detect an unlimited amount of security events across an enterprise network.

5- Threat Hunting (Blue-Teaming)
There is a complete section for threat hunting where you put what you've learned into work and run attacks such as Spawn Session and Process Injection, ShellShock, MSHTA, Brute-Force, Mimikatz, and so on from your Parrot OS and detect them with your SIEM tool that you've set up and completely configured during the course. During this section, you get familiar with how different IoC (Indication of Compromise) will appear in your SIEM tool.

6- Python Scripting for Security
Learn how to create scripts and programs to do what you want whenever you are required to, from small scripts that are needed during pentest to more sophisticated ones during Red Team Ops. there is a crash course about Python basics included in this course to promote you in this must-know language field.

7- Linux (Kali Linux and Parrot OS)
Linux runs the world, especially when it comes to the cybersecurity world. There is a crash course about Linux basics in this course. However, during this course and after many hours of exciting hands-on practices on the different offensive and defensive security methods you will become a Linux expert at the level of a cybersecurity expert. You will learn Kali Linux and Parrot OS as the main Linux distros used in this course.

Here is an overview of the main content of the course:

• Sections 1 to 3 are for introduction and preparation. Here you set up your offensive lab and will learn the basics of Linux to get prepared for the ethical hacking sections. You will also install Kali Linux and Microsoft Visual Studio Code as your main IDE (Integrated development environment). Then you move on to create your vulnerable labs such as dvwa, bwapp, webgoat, and so on. Also, you will do your first capture-the-flag (CTF) and create your HTB (HackTheBox dot com) account if you haven't before.
  

• You will start your professional white hat hacking training from sections 4 to 10. Here you will learn a broad range of hacking tools, attack vectors, technics, and procedures. They start from Reconnaissance, enumeration, vulnerability scanning to exploitation, post-exploitation, password cracking. You will continue with network attacks (wired and wireless), social engineering attacks, Web applications attacks (OWASP Top 10), and much more.
  

• You'll take your second crash course in Python in section 11. Here you learn Python geared towards IT Security and Hacking purposes.
  

• Now you have earned all the requirements, a professional hacker needs in the pentesting battlefield. In section 12, you get to know the interesting world of CTFs (Capture the Flags), especially on HackTheBox dot com and will hack 8 machines:
  3 Easy machines: BLUE, DEVEL, NETMON
  4 Medium: SNIPER, MANGO, BLUNDER, POPCORN
  1 Hard: CONTROL
  By the end of this section, you are an ethical hacker who feels incredibly confident with penetration testing in different hacking scenarios.
  

• Everything is standardized in modern times. Giving a break to practical hacking, in section 13 you will learn the must-know security standards such as MITRE, OWASP, PTES, OSSTMM and their terminologies as well as methodologies in the IT Security field.
  

• We did everything up to here to be a great Red Teamer, here you learn how to use all that practical ethical hacking techniques along with MITRE ATT&CK Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures to conduct a comprehensive Red Teaming assessment on your customers. In section 14 you will learn how to work based on various MITRE TTPs with a powerful Red Teaming Framework. You will also learn how to customize your C2 to be like what you want and also learn how to do various operations with it.
  

• More than half of today's APTs (Advanced Persistent Threats) are experts on active directory attacks and you as an ethical hacker or Red Teamer should also know how to do that and report vulnerabilities to your customers. In section 15 you will learn how to configure AD, create a vulnerable AD lab and perform some of the most important attacks in this category. Having this category of attacks in a separated section is because of the importance and amount of common attacks by APTs on this module in the victim’s environment.
  

• In section 16 we tried to cover every tactic, its corresponding technique, and also the procedures behind it standardized by MITRE ATT&CK all in one. We will study most of the operations done by threat actors and APTs. Their TTPs are covered line by line and in near future, with some updates, we are going to practice every technique after its explanations. Also, most of these TTPs are covered during the course without knowing what category of TTPs it is. It is really important to stick to MITRE ATT&CK and that’s why we put a small section on it.
  

• Up to section 17, you finished your pythonic offensive security with all possible aspects. Now you are a professional and ethical hacker. From this section on, you start your defensive security journey, where the focus is mainly on defense against offensive technics and tactics you've learned up until here. In this section, you learn terminologies and methodologies such as "Defense in Depth" on the defensive side, where the SIEM tool is in the center of attention.
  

• In section 18 you start building up your fully customized Linux-based and 100% open source SIEM tool using Elastic-Stack and Wazuh Manager (The Open Source Security Platform). In this section, you set up Wazuh Manager Server, Open Distro for Elasticsearch, Filebeat, and Kibana.
  

• Then in section 19, you move on to endpoints such as Windows and Linux Servers, Windows 10, and Fortigate firewall appliance, to integrate these different log sources into your ELK-Stack SIEM server. Also, you will learn how you can roll out authenticated Wazuh agents on a network of Windows machines using Domain GPOs in an automated form.
  

• Section 20 covers index management in Elasticsearch where the life cycle of the indexes will be managed. In this lecture, you will learn how to manage your accumulated alerts in your Elastic Stack to improve your server disks and storage.
  

• In section 21 you will extend your configured SIEM with its capabilities such as File Integrity Monitoring (FIM), Linux Syscalls monitoring, Enterprise continuous vulnerability monitoring, CIS Hardening Benchmarks (SCA), Windows Defender, and Sysinternals Sysmon Eventchannel.
  

• How one can create new alerts out of ingested logs in Wazuh Manager is the topic of section 22. In this section, you will learn how decoders and rules are constructed behind the scenes and how you can create your own custom decoders and rules for your own requirements.
  

• And finally, you will finish this course with hunting IoCs (threat hunting) in your fully customized SIEM. In section 23, you will run some of the attacks you have learned during the course such as Mimikatz, HTA, Brute Force, etc. from your Cobalt Strike on your Parrot OS against your endpoints (Wazuh agents) and you will examine generated alerts for these specific security events.

Disclaimer:

• This course is created for educational purposes only, all the attacks are launched in our own lab or against online Lab systems that are legally permitted to run tests against them.

• This course is totally a product of the two instructors of this course and no other organization is associated with it. Although, you will receive a Course Completion Certification from Udemy, apart from that NO OTHER ORGANISATION IS INVOLVED.