Pwn School Project Syllabus

 · 6 mins read

Hello friends! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Today, I have a small community contribution. I’ve spent the last few weeks very briefly reviewing every video on this post, and I’ve sorted them into various categories as they relate to common penetration testing methodologies. It may not be 100% accurate…but with that stipulation out of the way, I want to chime in my personal thoughts on Phillip Wylie’s Pwn School Project.

I should also take a moment to talk about my relationship with The Pwn School Project.

I’m not funded or sponsored in any way by Phillip Wylie or The Pwn School Project. The information herein is not an official syllabus, and should not be regarded as an authoritative source - or representative of the thoughts of Phillip Wylie or The Pwn School Project in any manner. This is simply something I wanted to do to help out the community, and support Phillip after having met with him on Eric Balardo’s stream in recent times. You can find the link to that stream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD70RBD9YuQ

Abstract

The Pwn School Project is effectively a free, professional-level, online training and knowledge sharing channel on Youtube based on penetration testing and ethical hacking:

The Pwn School Project’s Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThePwnSchoolProject

The Pwn School Project was started by Phillip Wylie as a way to help college students further their education in cybersecurity - particularly, in penetration testing methodology, and has now grown to a community of several thousand students spanning from many different backgrounds. If you know me, I’m a huge fan of “stuff/things” that are cheap, but especially things that are free. This is an awesome platform that is inclusive, friendly to newcomers, and has high-quality content…it’s really hard for me to criticize anything about it.

So this pseudo-syllabus is my contribution to you, as well as to The Pwn School Project. If you want to take this from a truly academic approach, I’ve included a short worksheet at the end with some simple questions to ask yourself about each video (think of it as a sort of homework that doesn’t get a grade, and there are no wrong answers).

Please feel free to reach out to me on Twitter if additions/modifications/retractions need to be made, and I’ll be happy to get those taken care of.

Syllabus

Start Here

Welcome To The Pwn School Project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuiMtiglFYs

About The Pwn School Project - Phillip Wylie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYkn3tm6-to

The Pentester Blueprint AMA with Kim Crawley and Phillip Wylie - Pwn School Denton April 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfe6Mvn6sHQ

IT & Cyber Defense Knowledge

“An Introduction to Active Defense & Cyber Deception” by Sheldon “PoppaShell” Carmichael

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkkGE_4fzhY

Chad Graham presents “What do you mean we’ve been hacked?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VieghHH9s8g

Life in Containers: The Big Picture by Pankaj Mouriya

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwBshgfnAGA

Pwn School Nov. 2019: Defense through Deception - Jared Folkins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxx-ocbqqwA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cJ_RxC_Jfs

Demystifying Deep Learning: Past, Present and the Future - Dr. Saumitra Das

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCZn0OjSseA

Ransomware on XMAS Day: Ransomware Case Study - Jeff Beley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxOWhy8m-ug

Talk starts around 5:00

Penetration Testing

Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT)

FunkyCold presents “Intro into OSINT - Feeding your inner stalker, legally of course”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJV7hPWrkag

Intro to OSINT, Deep Web, and Darknet by Levitannin - September 2021 Pwn School

Talk starts around 15:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgOek7kGVDE

Enumeration

@0xtavian presents “Axiom: A Distributed Hacking Framework for Pentesters and Red Teamers”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Bp_SUdaIo

Exploitation

Pwn School Feb. 2019 Jeff Carrel IPv6 Hacking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daMJUdZjxe4

Windows-Specific Or Active Directory

April 2019 Pwn School - What’s zDeal with zBang?! Discover Hidden Risks in AD with zBang.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DARS5w5eMJo

Pwn School Feb 2020: Hacker Tool Talk with Mark Mo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-EIi__vyeU

Web Exploitation

Cary Hooper presents “Modern Web Application Vulnerabilities (on the perimeter right now)”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZUrmpYAw50

Exploiting Web APIs by Matt Scheurer - Pwn School Denton July 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPV9Dwbt42I

“API Keys Now What? Taking the Pen Test into the Amazon Cloud” by Jim Shaver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qSsBVZekzE

Post-Exploitation

“World of C2’s” by Quentin Rhoads-Herrera and Chase Dardaman - Pwn School September 21, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkdcDZs9aFw

Intro to Cracking Hashes - Micah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2azOFOCkNM

Reporting

Pwn School Oct. 21, 2020 - Report Writing with Austin Tipton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQZjqaAFy4I

Rich Mirch - Bug Hunting: An Adventure in Free Time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajfdAv2nXYM

Full Demo

Proving Ground Walkthrough with Pentester Carlos Gonzales - Pwn School June 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxuD96NXySg

May 2019 Pwn School - TinkerSec “Breach”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e99iQC-dod8

Red Teaming

July 2019 Pwn School Samuel Kimmons “Red Team Tactics for Pentesters”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmGL241vpMk

Physical Breach

Breaking and Entering with SDR by Redsand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_PJpRcSw-0

Wirefall presents TeleSploit Open Source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxT-pxzmCKo

Career

Advice

The Upside Down Ladder - Shane Walker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ntCBWrolfM

Dallas Hackers Association Panel Discussion - Pwn School Dallas June 2020

Youtube Age-Restricted Content Warning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzpwXhvEytc&t=1598s

Building Your Brand (Social Media & Resume) - Heath Adams & Zach Hill of TCM Academy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi647l0gk_o

Roadmaps

“Hacking And Gaming: How Video Games Can Create the Hacker Mindset” - Davin Jackson

Talk starts at 18:14

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkDiIuz3o0A

Maril Vernon shares her journey into pentesting and red teaming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwZChiSyrxk

The Student Roadmap to Becoming A Penetration Tester by Jon Helmus - Pwn School August 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfbiH7qpVPs

“From Developer to Security” by Rey Bango - Pwn School Dallas July 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Komr3wY8Czw

Making a SOC Analyst by Paul Aronhalt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N57r3szYMWw

Pwn School Dallas - Sept2019 Ross Williams Tech to Exec

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccq0694Zj5M

The Hacker Maker - Parker Daudt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dMRz3LPdJc

Certification Prep

OSCP Study Tips by Nyte Theme

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xJq-HhDJik

Learning Worksheet

Questions

1. At a high-level, what was this talk about?

2. What are three things I learned from this video?

  • Learning takeaway 1
  • Learning takeaway 2
  • Learning takeaway 3

3. Which moment from the talk was the most memorable and why?

4. If there was information I didn’t understand, what are some references to help expand my knowledge on those topics?

5. Did this video expand on knowledge in another domain of penetration testing methodology? If so, what was that correlation, and how were these topics associated?

6. What resources did the presenter suggest to learn more about this topic?

References