Don's Introduction to Ethical Hacking for Beginners

Define hacking as interacting with systems outside their intended use and outline hacker types from blackout to white hacks and gray hat.

Navigate the fog of law to understand what constitutes ethical versus illegal hacking, authorization, and privacy concerns in a global context.

Learn how penetration testing, or ethical hacking, uses authorized simulated attacks to evaluate security, covering vulnerability assessment, white/black/gray box testing, and red team exercises.

Explore Linux navigation with pwd, mkdir, cd; copy and move files with cp and mv; manage permissions with chmod and setuid; view files with cat, head, tail, and less.

Master grep pattern matching to search and highlight lines across files with flags like -i, -r, -L, and -v; learn basic file and text tools like touch, nano, and wc.

Set up a netcat listener to transfer a hello world file to a remote box and observe a remote bash prompt with input redirected to output.

After reconnaissance, map the target's service versions and banners, then search exploit databases for publicly released exploits to identify a backdoor and its code, and test credentials across sites.

Explore major security vulnerabilities such as Heartbleed, Shellshock, and Dirty Cow, and learn how they arise, how exploits work, and how to adapt exploit code across Windows and Linux environments.

Learn how to use WPScan to map a WordPress site's attack surface, enumerating users, plugins, themes, and detected vulnerabilities, and review results from the scan.