Foundations of Pentesting and Privilege Escalation

Ethical hacking relies on understanding how attackers think, move, and gain control over systems. This text-based course guides you through the core concepts of penetration testing and the critical phase of privilege escalation. You will transition from understanding basic security concepts to analyzing system vulnerabilities and systematically elevating your access permissions. By learning both Linux and Windows escalation vectors, you will develop the mindset needed to identify and patch critical security gaps before malicious actors can exploit them. What you'll learn: 1. Understand the foundational phases of penetration testing, from reconnaissance to post-exploitation. 2. Identify common system misconfigurations and vulnerable services that lead to initial access. 3. Learn privilege escalation techniques for both Windows and Linux environments, including kernel exploits and misconfigured services. 4. Explore modern escalation vectors, including container escapes and cloud-based permission misconfigurations. 5. Analyze system permissions, SUID files, and registry pathways to find escalation opportunities. 6. Practice defensive mitigation strategies to secure systems against privilege escalation attacks. The course begins with essential security terminology and the methodology of ethical hacking. From there, you will progress through structured text-based lessons covering enumeration, initial access, and scenarios for elevating privileges on local and network-connected systems. This course is designed for aspiring security analysts, system administrators, and beginners curious about ethical hacking, requiring no prior cybersecurity experience. Start your journey into security auditing and master the techniques used to secure modern infrastructure.