Course Overview Learn advanced penetration testing skills and explore sophisticated attack vectors and exploit development. This course spans network infrastructure attacks, cryptographic implementation testing, advanced post-exploitation techniques, and custom exploit writing for both Windows and Linux environments. Hands-on labs provide practical experience with fuzzing, return-oriented programming, exploit mitigation bypasses, and real-world application exploitation. Expert-Level Security Assessment: Advanced Methods in Penetration Testing SEC660: Advanced Penetration Testing, Exploit Writing, and Ethical Hacking is designed as a logical progression point for those who have completed SANS SEC560: Enterprise Penetration Testing, or for those with existing penetration testing experience. Students with the prerequisite knowledge to take this course will walk through dozens of real-world attacks used by the most seasoned penetration testers. The methodology of a given attack is discussed, followed by exercises in a hands-on lab to consolidate advanced concepts and facilitate the immediate application of techniques in the workplace. Each day of the course includes a two-hour evening boot camp to drive home additional mastery of the techniques discussed. A sample of topics covered includes attacks against network access control (NAC) and virtual local area network (VLAN) manipulation, network device exploitation, breaking out of Linux and Windows restricted environments, IPv6, Linux privilege escalation and exploit-writing, testing cryptographic implementations, fuzzing, defeating modern OS controls such as address space layout randomization (ASLR) and data execution prevention (DEP), return-oriented programming (ROP), Windows exploit-writing, and much more! Attackers are becoming more clever and their attacks more complex. To keep up with the latest attack methods, you need a strong desire to learn, the support of others, and the opportunity to practice and build experience. This course provides attendees with in-depth knowledge of the most prominent and powerful attack vectors and furnishes an environment to perform these attacks in numerous hands-on scenarios. The course goes far beyond simple scanning for low-hanging fruit and shows penetration testers how to model the abilities of an advanced attacker to find significant flaws in a target environment and demonstrate the business risk associated with these flaws. SEC660 starts off by introducing advanced penetration concepts and providing an overview to prepare students for what lies ahead. The focus of day one is on network attacks, especially the areas often left untouched by testers. Topics include accessing, manipulating, and exploiting the network. Covered attacks include NAC, VLANs, OSPF, 802.1X, CDP, IPv6, SSL, ARP, and others. Day two starts with a technical module on performing penetration testing against various cryptographic implementations, then turns to PowerShell and post exploitation, escaping Linux restricted environments and Windows restricted desktop environments. Day three jumps into Scapy for packet crafting, product security testing, network and application fuzzing, and code coverage techniques. Days four and five are spent exploiting programs on the Linux and Windows operating systems. You will learn to identify privileged programs, redirect the execution of code, reverse-engineer programs to locate vulnerable code, obtain code execution for administrative shell access, and defeat modern operating system controls such as ASLR, canaries, and DEP using ROP and other techniques. Local and remote exploits as well as client-side exploitation techniques are covered. The final course day is devoted to numerous penetration testing challenges that require students to solve complex problems and capture flags. Among the biggest benefits of SEC660 is the expert-level hands-on guidance provided through the labs and the additional time allotted each evening to reinforce daytime material and master the exercises. Hands-On Training Exploit routing protocol implementations such as OSPF. Bypass NAC and captive portal implementations. Exploit patch updates. Perform MitM attacks to remove SSL. Perform IPv6 attacks. Exploit poor cryptographic implementations using CBC bit flipping attacks and hash length extension attacks. Exploit virtualization implementations. Write Python scripts to automate testing. Write fuzzers to trigger bugs in software. Reverse-engineer applications to locate code paths and identify potential exploitable bugs. Debug Linux applications. Debug Windows applications. Write exploits against buffer overflow vulnerabilities. Bypass exploit mitigations such as ASLR, DEP, stack canaries, SafeSEH, etc. Use ROP to bypass or disable security controls. Author Statement "When conducting an in-depth penetration test, we are often faced with situations that require unique or complex solutions to successfully pull off an attack, mimicking the activities of increasingly sophisticated real-world attackers. Without the skills to identify and implement those solutions, you may miss a major vulnerability or not properly assess its business impact. Target system personnel are relying on you to tell them whether an environment is secured. Attackers are almost always one step ahead and are relying on our nature to become complacent, even with regard to the very controls we worked so hard to deploy. This course was written to keep you from making mistakes others have made, teach you cutting-edge tricks to thoroughly evaluate a target, and provide you with the skills to jump into exploit development." - Stephen Sims What You’ll Learn Advanced network attack methodologies Custom exploit development techniques Exploit mitigation bypass strategies Modern fuzzing implementations Post-exploitation advancement tactics Return-oriented programming mastery Cryptographic weakness assessment Business Takeaways Enhanced threat detection capabilities Improved security control validation Reduced enterprise attack surface Advanced risk assessment accuracy Stronger application security testing