GUIDE

Getting Started with Penetration Testing

Abhishek Mainali•MARCH 15, 2026•8 min read

Setting Up Your Home Lab

Building a safe and isolated environment is the first critical step for any aspiring penetration tester. Start by downloading virtualization software like VMware or VirtualBox to host your vulnerable machines. Always ensure your lab network is segmented from your primary home network to prevent accidental exposure (e.g. Host-Only networking in VirtualBox).

Never scan or exploit systems that you do not have explicit written authorization to test. This lab must be strictly kept offline.

Essential Reconnaissance Tooling

Reconnaissance is 90% of the job. You'll need to master tools like `nmap` for port scanning and active host discovery. Let's look at a basic aggressive scan syntax.

scan.sh

bash

nmap -p- -sC -sV -T4 -A -oA initial_scan 192.168.1.50

The `-oA` flag outputs the results in all three major formats (normal, XML, greppable), which is perfect for documentation.

Practicing Privilege Escalation

Gaining initial access is only the beginning; elevating your privileges to root is where the real fun starts. On Linux environments, search for misconfigured SUID binaries or writable cron jobs.

bash

find / -perm -u=s -type f 2>/dev/null

Classifications

#pentesting#kali#nmap#privesc

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Abhishek Mainali

Ethical Hacker

Dedicated to exposing vulnerabilities before threat actors can exploit them in the wild.