Chapter 2: Building a Penetration Testing Lab

As a future ethical hacker or penetration tester, it is quite important when testing exploits, payloads, or practicing your hacking skills that you do not disrupt or cause any sort of harm or damage to another person's systems or network infrastructure, such as that of your organization. While there are many tutorials, videos, and training programs you can read and view to gain knowledge, working in the field of penetration testing means focuses on continuously enhancing your skills. Many people can speak about hacking and explain the methodology quite clearly but don't know how to perform an attack. When learning about penetration testing, it's very important to understand the theory and how to use your skills to apply them to a real-world cyberattack.

In this chapter, you will learn how to design and create your penetration testing lab environment on your existing computer using virtualization technologies. You will...