Mastering advanced hacking and IT security techniques

Day 1: introduction to cybersecurity and the Red Team approach

• Cybersecurity overview:
  • Defining hacking and cybersecurity and their challenges.
  • Overview of current and emerging threats.
  • Security references: ANSSI, ENISA, CLUSIF, Cybermalveillance.gouv and others.
  • Types of hackers: hacktivists, cybercriminals, insiders and others.
  • Types of attacks: phishing, malware, ransomware, denial of service and others.
  • Tools and techniques used by hackers: reconnaissance, port scanning, vulnerability exploitation and more.
  • The cyberattack life cycle: reconnaissance, exploitation, maintaining access, privilege escalation, data exfiltration and more.
• Establishing a Red Team:
  • The offensive approach: simulating real attacks to identify vulnerabilities.
  • Reconnaissance and discovery: network scanning, exploring open services and identifying weaknesses.
  • Vulnerability exploitation and privilege escalation techniques.
  • Establishing a backdoor: information exfiltration, dictionary creation and brute-force attacks.

Day 2: understanding defensive security

• Establishing a Blue Team:
  • Proactive cyberattack defence: detection, prevention and response.
  • Security pillars: confidentiality, integrity, availability and traceability.
  • Implementing defence-in-depth strategies.
  • Network and system security: internal networks, VLANs, DMZs, firewalls and more.
• System and application hardening
  • Linux and Windows hardening: the process of securing an information system.
  • Securing network services: SSH, DHCP, VLANs and more.
  • Implementing security measures for critical services: IDS/IPS and log management.
  • Monitoring and managing security incidents through SOC and SIEM capabilities.
• Incident response:
  • Establishing structured incident response: log analysis and identifying attack traces.
  • Using tools such as Wireshark and ELK for intrusion detection.
  • Incident management approaches: identification, isolation and remediation.

Day 3: advanced concepts and in-depth hardening

• Advanced security principles:
  • How IAAA works: Identification, Authentication, Authorisation and Audit.
  • Security principles: need to know, least privilege, non-repudiation and more.
  • Securing access to critical systems: privilege management, network segmentation and access control.
• Network infrastructure security:
  • OSI Layer 2: VLANs, port security and ARP MITM attack prevention.
  • OSI Layer 3: IPsec and router filtering.
  • OSI Layer 4: gateways, firewalls and IDS/IPS configuration.
  • OSI Layer 5: proxies and outbound communication filtering.
• Security monitoring and management
  • Introduction to SOC and SIEM capabilities for threat detection and management.
  • Implementing a log management system with ELK.

Day 4: practical labs — AD, Linux and web applications

• Active Directory exploitation:
  • How AD architecture works: identity and permission management.
  • Active Directory attack techniques: LDAP injection, Kerberos attacks and privilege escalation through pass-the-hash attacks.
  • Privilege escalation and manipulation of groups and security policies.
• Linux system exploitation:
  • Privilege escalation and exploitation of vulnerable services.
  • Backdoor techniques and data exfiltration.
  • Hardening and implementing protections.
• Web application exploitation:
  • Common attacks: SQL injection, XSS, CSRF and more.
  • Using tools such as Burp Suite to exploit vulnerabilities.
  • Web application hardening: securing entry points and databases.

Day 5: practical labs — attacks and defences

• Simulating real attacks:
  • A complete attack from reconnaissance to data exfiltration.
  • Using Red Team tools: Metasploit, Nmap, Burp Suite and others.
  • Pivoting and escalation techniques in multicomponent environments: AD, Linux and web applications.
• Incident response and log analysis:
  • Collecting and analysing logs across systems and environments.
  • Investigation with Wireshark, ELK and Splunk.
  • Incident response: identifying actions to contain and eliminate attacks.
• Review and best practices
  • Reviewing the main vulnerabilities discovered during labs.
  • Security best practices to strengthen system defences.
  • Discussion of establishing a sustainable, effective security policy.