Week 1 - Intro to Ethical Hacking and Building the Lab

As required by the course guidelines, any tools, techniques, and tutorials shared on this blog are strictly for educational purposes. I am not responsible for any misuse of the information or tools demonstrated here.

We just had our first session for the Ethical Hacking & Pen Test course at BINUS University International. Our lecturer, Pak Kalpin Erlangga Silaen, laid out the syllabus, the ground rules, and what we will be covering this semester.

The main objective of the course is straightforward: get hands-on experience with hacking tools and penetration testing techniques. We will be walking through the complete ethical hacking cycle, which includes information gathering, enumeration, system hacking, privilege escalation, and covering tracks. Our main textbook for the semester is Mastering Kali Linux by Noah Hardy.

Course Policies and Ethics One thing made very clear today is that professional ethics are non-negotiable in this field. We are actually expected to sign an agreement stating our professional ethical stand regarding the materials we learn.

The class has an absolute zero-tolerance policy for cheating or copying someone else's work. If you are caught cheating on an exam, the penalty is dropping out. We are encouraged to collaborate and work as a team, but collaboration does not mean copying. You have to do your own original work.

Assignment 1: Lab Setup To actually practice attacking and defending, we need an isolated virtual environment. Our very first assignment is to get this lab up and running.

Here are the specific hardware and software requirements we have to meet for the VM:

  • Install a hypervisor like VirtualBox or VMware.

  • Create a new virtual machine dedicated to Kali Linux.

  • Allocate a minimum of 4 GB of RAM.

  • Allocate at least 2 vCPUs.

  • Set up a minimum of 40 GB of storage (an SSD is highly recommended).

  • Install Kali Linux 2025.4, using either an installer or a pre-installed VM image from the official Kali website.

I need to write up the documentation for my installation process and email it in to meet the deadline. Time to start downloading the Kali image and setting up the VM.

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