CST 209 — Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking
This hands-on course emphasizes ethical offensive security and professional hacking methodologies used to evaluate and harden modern IT environments. Students learn structured attack workflows and adversary emulation techniques to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in web, wireless, cloud, and IoT systems while strictly following legal, ethical, and responsible disclosure practices. Topics include social engineering, red team operations, exploit development, post exploitation analysis, automated testing tools, and AI assisted vulnerability discovery and code generation. Labs feature realistic, isolated environments, capture-the-flag exercises, and collaborative blue/red team scenarios to practice both offensive and defensive responses. Content aligns with EC-Council’s Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) and CompTIA PenTest+ objectives and prepares students for careers in ethical hacking, red teaming, and security assessment.
Prerequisites: CSC 201, CST 205