Before we dive into this course I want to talk about a day in the life of an ethical hacker.
And I want to talk about why I love ethical hacking or penetration testing and what I do on a day to
day basis.
What kind of engagements you might find yourself in as an ethical hacker and then the soft skills and
technical skills.
I think that you should have in order to be successful in this field.
So let's go ahead and first look at why pin testing so why pen testing why for me.
Well I work from home.
I roll out of bed at like 750 5:00 in the morning.
I'll get my coffee ready I'll go to my desk I'll make it there by 8:00.
And I am ready to go.
I don't have to sit in traffic.
I'll have to drive to work.
I you know I save so much time out of my life just by working from home.
It's a great luxury.
I love the lifestyle.
It's not for everybody but a lot of penetration testing nowadays is working from home.
And another great thing about pen testing is that the salaries are incredibly high.
My first job in the field was over six figures meaning over one hundred thousand dollars in this field.
As a you know first year pen tester.
So it's incredible money and it it's very lucrative moving up anywhere from senior pen tester to make
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
A manager can make somewhere around one hundred and seventy to two hundred thousand dollars.
And really the sky's the limit.
Especially if you go out and you do your own business or your own consulting the salaries are very very
high because this is a very technical field.
And there there is a job shortage of people shortage right now we need we have more jobs and we have
people so that relates to high salaries as well.
On top of that the benefits are great.
The work life balance is great.
Again this boils down to where you work.
But for me personally you know I'm working 40 hour weeks.
My benefits are are have been fantastic through and through and I just I love the lifestyle right.
That work from home that 40 hours a week I was an accountant before I got into penetration testing.
And let me tell you I was working 60 hours a week 70 hour weeks.
I was in the office all the time and I was you know I was going in when it was dark and I was coming
home when it was dark and it just you know can easily lead to depression doing that.
I've not experienced any of that and penetration testing and I'm really really happy for it.
So on top of all this it is mentally stimulating.
This is one of the best fields I am what I consider a lifelong learner.
I like to learn.
I am nonstop learning right and I have that personality type.
And you're going to find that if you enjoy this field it's never going to feel like work to you.
I could sit here and I can pen tests for 80 hours and it never feels like work to me it is just mentally
stimulating.
It's a puzzle.
There's always something new to learn.
There's always a new attack out and there's always a new defense out as well.
So somebody is always trying to block your attacks and it's this cat and mouse game and if you do not
stay up to date or on top of things you're going to get left behind.
So you have to have that mentality in this field where you're always willing to learn and you like learning
and that's really like for me.
That's a positive to pen testing because I enjoy that.
And lastly of course it's legal breaking and entering.
Who doesn't like that.
I get to break into buildings.
I get to break into Web sites into networks and people pay me to do it.
I cannot believe that this is a job when I first heard about it.
I was like No way hackers.
Hackers are bad guys right.
But hackers can be good guys too and we can get paid very lucrative salaries.
So from here.
Let's talk about a day to day life style.
So day to day here what's guaranteed most.
It basically should be guaranteed is that I roll out of bed.
I'm still relatively young and I have several different types of assessments that I can do in this really
isn't all of them.
But this is the ones that I do the most.
Now I have what is an external or internal network assessment and we're gonna cover those quite a bit
in this course but when we're talking external network assessment that means that I'm evaluating a network
from the outside I could be I could be in China I can be United States I could be in Russia.
It doesn't matter where I'm attacking from right.
I could be in any country at any time attacking this network.
So I'm on the outside looking in the internal is different.
We assume at this point that we have breached the network.
We have a dropbox.
We've got some sort of code execution on their network.
We logged into their VPN.
It doesn't matter.
Somehow some way we're on that network.
What can we do once we're inside the network and what that means is we're going to be talking a lot
about Active Directory pen testing and that's really what it corresponds to.
And this course is going to hit very very heavy on Active Directory because of this and this.
So you have two different types of network pen test and they the methodology is very similar the attacks
in tool sets are very different.
So they can almost be split apart into their own subsections but you will have external pen tests internal
pen tests on the network side.
You may be asked to do web application penetration testing.
So that is assessing a Web site right.
You have a Web site or an application that is given to you and you want to see if you can break that
Web site if you can log in as an administrator or get somewhere that you you shouldn't be able to get
to and you just want to evaluate the security posture of that Web site.
So there are a lot of tools and methodologies out there for that.
And we're gonna cover the top 10 in this course when we talk about that which is big when it comes to
testing web applications.
So from there we also have what is called wireless penetration testing that is the evaluation of a wireless
network.
So we'll go on site we'll try to hack into the wireless.
We'll look at the guest network and see if there's any segmentation or not.
Should a guest be able to sign in and access the same network that somebody who is a logged in as an
employee should access.
The answer is No.
But it happens quite a bit.
We'll also look for rogue devices and see you know what might be out there that is interesting to us.
We'll we'll talk more about all these different assessments when we get into their respective sections.
Now there's also what is called physical or social or phishing.
There are three different types but they fall into social engineering.
Now physical assessment is where you go onsite and you try to break into a building.
You have a destination in mind maybe it's a server closet or you know some some critical location the
building that they don't want you to get into.
This could involve picking locks.
Social engineering a lot of the time cloning badges you know in just making your way into this building
through whatever methodology you can.
Now social engineering in fishing those are kind of hand-in-hand.
You'll do a fishing campaign or social engineering campaign or even a fishing where you're calling on
the phone and you're trying to get information and you're just after you know what kind of credentials
can I get who clicks on my links.
What kind of passwords do I get.
Etc. We also have what is called sock assessment.
So a sock isthmus assessment is also known as purple teaming and purple teaming is when you combine
red and blue.
So as a penetration tester or ethical hacker you're often known as a red and a defender is often known
as blue.
So you combine those and that makes purple.
And what that means is we'll sit down with a blue team as an offensive team we'll sit down with the
blue team and we'll say Hey what attacks do you want us to try to run or we're going to run these attacks.
And I want to know if you pick it up so I might run a specific tack and see if the Blue Team detects
it.
I might go plug into their network and see if it prevents me from plugging into the network.
Do they get an alert on that.
If not how can we help them.
Baseline this attack to get this alert.
So I think purple teaming assessments are some of the best assessments that are out there because not
only do they learn from you and what attacks are out there but you learn from them on how to defend
against these and how to bypass these two because maybe your first attempt does get blocked and you're
like hey maybe I should you know run a different attack and see if you catch that.
And it's a great way to have that cat and mouse game again.
So once we do these types of assessments we have to write a report.
We have to report back on what we saw and tell the client about it and I put a little sad face there
because you know not everybody likes writing reports but it is absolutely part of the job.
You have to be well written in this field to be successful.
So you know you write this report and you're going to have to present this report to a client and that's
what is the debrief now debrief is where you take the report and you give it to a client and you walk
through it with the client and say Here's what's wrong here's why it's wrong and here's how we can fix
that for you or here's how you can fix that.
Right.
And so you have to have this technical skill set as a penetration tester and you have to have this well
written skill set you have to be able to write well you also to be able to talk in front of people when
it comes to doing debriefs and talk to people.
That doesn't mean you have to be an extrovert by any means you can be an introvert.
I am very introverted but you have to be able put that personality on when you're on site.
Same thing with the physicals by the way if you're on site for a physical.
You do not have to be an extrovert to be successful.
I know plenty of good physical pen testers that are actually introverts and do just fine as long as
you're able to get into that mindset for that temporary time period.
So anywhere from all these different assessments that you could end up doing at any given time you'd
be well-rounded there you're gonna be writing reports you're going to be presenting reports to clients
now let's talk about the technical skills that you are going to need and our course here is going to
cover a lot of these.
So at a base level you really do need to know Linux preferably Cally Linux or what.
Another type is called Parrot.
There is networking that you should know you should be familiar with the LSI model certain protocols
like DCP UDP HDP etc. You should have good scripting skills whether it be python scripting or bash scripting
et cetera there and you should have a solid hacking methodology.
And this is all what we would want as a base for an interview.
You should have also tool familiarity right Metis polite burp sweet ness is if all this sounds like
a foreign language to you that's fine.
Come back and watch this video again.
Once you've gone through the whole course and it's going to all click for you you're gonna say Hey I
know a lot of this.
And on the preferred side active directory is huge.
If you know actor directory you're going to be ahead of the game most people and I interviewed them.
They have a good base but they don't have that good preferred site.
And we like we like the preferred column a lot.
OK.
So active directory super important wireless attacks important to know the last top 10 also important
to know that is related to web application penetration testing and lastly coding skills.
So scripting and coding a little bit different scripting is what you'll be using primarily coding.
You don't have to be a coder to be successful in this field at all.
By the way if you only script for the rest of your life in this field you'll still find plenty of success.
However you can code new tools things you know contribute to the community with it.
We'll talk about that here in a second as well but just know that the base is possibly potentially can
get you into a job to preferred.
We'll definitely get you into a job if you have strong knowledge on that side.
Along with the base knowledge lastly something that is not covered much is these soft skills that you
need to be a pen tester.
So yeah it's great to be technical and we already talked about the social people skills right.
Because you're gonna be doing that debriefing.
You might be doing social engineering etc. and you're going to have to have that well written ability
to you as well.
But let's talk about some these other ones.
You need a strong desire to learn.
You should be the type of person that personality type that always wants to learn.
We talked about it right where you should be the guy or girl that wants to go home and study and you
find this fascinating in you that desire to learn is going to benefit you because of that cat and mouse
game because you know something that you knew yesterday might not be an exploit today.
You know patches are coming out all the time and you have to stay ahead of the game because of this
cat and mouse game.
So that strong desire to learn super important if you do not stick up with your studies you're gonna
get left behind and most people have this desire to be in the field of ethical hacking because they
think it's sexy.
It sounds cool and is cool but if you do not have that desire to learn you do not have that that perseverance
which are going to talk about you're going to get left behind in this field and you're not going to
be successful.
So let's move over to perseverance.
You have to have this perseverance mindset now which is that desire to learn but also that ability to
not give up because the answer is not always there in front of you and you're going to see this as we
go through the course is not cut and dry it's not hey I scan for this I see an exploit I go exploit
it you might have to do a lot of research it might look like the machine that you're attacking it has
no exploits available to it and you have to be able to put in that persistence to be able to persevere
you have to have that mindset where I'm not going to give up I'm going to keep trying at this until
I have exhausted all my potential resources.
That is what makes a good hacker.
OK that that mindset of I'm not going to quit really makes a good hacker.
Now on top of that non complacency this kind of falls into that strong desire to learn.
Now I've had coworkers that are completely happy when I was working helpdesk when I was working in networking.
Plenty of co-workers who were happy with their jobs.
They've been in the same position for five years 10 years.
You cannot be that person if you want to be a pen tester you always want to learn more.
You always want to move up you want and you want the most out of yourself.
OK don't be complacent if you're complacent you're gonna get left behind.
Just beating a dead horse here.
It really is true that you're going to get left behind if you're not constantly studying and if you
stay complacent.
Lastly you should have a blog or Twitter or get hub or something that you contribute back to the community
where it could be a YouTube channel or Twitter stream or however you want to do it right.
You should give back to the community when I see that somebody is giving back to the community on their
resumé even if it's a blog post or Twitter whatever.
It really helps in things that are going to ask and interview include where you get your news from or
in how do you you know do you have a blog you're gonna be asked that you know and Twitter is a great
place to get get news and blogs.
Great place to give back.
And Twitter is a great place to get back to.
So make sure you're contributing to your community.
It will really help you in the long run.
And you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
It could be a blog that somebody has posted before or 20 people post to be for as long as you're posting
it and it helps you learn and it helps your style might be something that helps somebody else learn
as well compared to the other blog posts where maybe people don't like that writing style or they don't
like that commentary or however it is.
So you never know how your content is going to help somebody else.
I always encourage people to go out there and make their own content so that's it.
And I know this is a long video this is going to be longer than most the videos that I wanted to dive
in and really cover what you can expect as an ethical hacker and what you need really at a technical
and a soft skill level to be successful.
So from here we're going to go ahead and get right into the course.
Next up is effective no keeping.
We're going to talk about the importance of keeping what tools you should use to be keeping notes through
this course.
And we're going to dive right into the technical concepts so I'll catch you over in the next video.