Midpoint Review: Test What You've Learned
Review the first seven steps and gauge your level: a revision quiz, a timed hands-on challenge against a lab target, and a self-assessment grid.
4 hrs/week
🟨 Checkpoint · Covers steps 1 to 7
Objectives
- Consolidate what you learned in the first half of the course.
- Make sure both the theory and the practice are keeping pace, before moving on to advanced exploitation.
Guided Review (1 h 20)
- Recap of the common thread: planning → reconnaissance → vulnerabilities → web exploitation.
- A 30-question multiple-choice quiz, to be self-graded.
- A look back at the most common mistakes from Lab 1.
What you absolutely must have mastered at this point
- Framework and methodology: the difference between a pentest and an audit, the role of the RoE, the phases of the cycle, legal basics (written authorization).
- Reconnaissance: passive (OSINT, DNS/WHOIS, certificates) versus active (Nmap, ports, versions, NSE).
- Vulnerabilities: reading a CVE, interpreting a CVSS score, prioritizing by risk.
- Web: recognizing and exploiting SQLi, XSS, LFI, file upload, and command injection; using Burp (Repeater).
- Cross-cutting: documenting everything (commands and evidence) for the report.