CompTIA PenTest+ PT0-003 Practice Exam 2026

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CompTIA PenTest+ validates your ability to identify, mitigate, and report system vulnerabilities. Covering all stages of penetration testing across attack surfaces like cloud, web apps, APIs, and IoT, it emphasizes hands-on skills such as vulnerability management and lateral movement. This certification equips you with the expertise to advance your career as a penetration tester or security consultant.

CompTIA PenTest+ exam objectives :-

Engagement management (13%)

• Planning and scoping: defining rules of engagement, testing windows, and target selection.

• Legal and ethical compliance: ensuring authorization letters, mandatory reporting, and adherence to regulations.

• Collaboration and communication: aligning with stakeholders through peer reviews, escalation paths, and risk articulation.

• Penetration test reports: creating reports with executive summaries, findings, and remediation recommendations.

Reconnaissance and enumeration (21%)

• Active and passive reconnaissance: gathering information using open-source intelligence (OSINT), network sniffing, and protocol scanning.

• Enumeration techniques: performing DNS enumeration, service discovery, and directory enumeration.

• Reconnaissance tools: using tools like Nmap, Wireshark, and Shodan for information gathering.

• Script modification: customizing Python, PowerShell, and Bash scripts for reconnaissance and enumeration.

Vulnerability discovery and analysis (17%)

• Vulnerability scans: conducting authenticated, unauthenticated, static application security testing (SAST) and dynamic application security testing (DAST).

• Result analysis: validating findings, troubleshooting configurations, and identifying false positives.

• Discovery tools: using tools like Nessus, Nikto, and OpenVAS for vulnerability discovery.

Attacks and exploits (35%)

• Network attacks: performing VLAN hopping, on-path attacks, and service exploitation.

• Authentication attacks: executing brute-force attacks, pass-the-hash, and credential stuffing.

• Host-based attacks: conducting privilege escalation, process injection, and credential dumping.

• Web application attacks: performing SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and directory traversal.

• Cloud-based attacks: exploiting container escapes, metadata service attacks, and identity and access management (IAM) misconfiguration.

• AI attacks: explaining prompt injection and model manipulation against artificial intelligence systems.

Post-exploitation and lateral movement (14%)

• Post-exploitation activities: establishing persistence, performing lateral movement, and cleaning up artifacts.

• Documentation: creating attack narratives and providing remediation recommendations.