Top hacking courses online

Best ethical hacking courses and resources

1. Udemy – Learn Ethical Hacking From Scratch (Paid – beginners)

This is a very comprehensive ethical hacking course for absolute beginners with no previous knowledge of hacking or penetration testing. It focuses on the practical side of penetration testing but doesn’t neglect the theory, e.g. how devices interact inside a network. You will first learn how to set up a testing lab on your own machine, and how to install the Kali Linux operating system. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with Linux; you will quickly learn the basic commands you need to interact with the Kali Linux terminal.

Cost:

• Approximately $150, although Udemy offers regular specials

Covers:

• Network penetration testing
• Gaining access
• Post exploitation
• Web application penetration testing

Duration:

• 12.5 hours on-demand video (about 120 videos)

Requirements:

• Basic IT skills
• Wireless adapter

More: Udemy provides an easily navigable portal to a wide range of ethical hacking courses, free and paid. Running a search on “ethical hacking” returns over 800 matches, more than 40 of them free. Some suggestions to get started:

• Start Kali Linux, Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing! (Free – Beginner) – Offers a complete tutorial on how to install VirtualBox, including on Windows 8.1, and run Kali Linux in any environment. Learn how to create a virtual environment and the basics of the Linux terminal. All you need is a fast internet connection. (4 hours)
• Kali Linux tutorial for beginners (Paid – Beginner) – Focuses on configuring the Kali Linux operating system to build up Linux targets from scratch to hack. No previous knowledge of Linux required. You will need to have a basic understanding of networking concepts and of ethical hacking concepts such as port scanning, vulnerability scanning, etc. (5.5 hours)

2. Cybrary – The Art of Exploitation (Free – Intermediate)

Buffer Overflow occurs when a program, while writing data to a buffer, overruns the buffer’s boundary and overwrites adjacent memory locations, creating a potential security vulnerability. In this ethical hacking course, you will write a Python script and use it to hack a system affected with Buffer Overflow.

Covers:

• Vulnerability and exploit
• Buffer Overflow

Duration:

• 3 hours on-demand video

Requirements:

• Prior coding experience

More: Cybrary courses are totally free and cover a wide range of subjects, but you must pay if you want a certificate of completion, or to access the assessments and exams (approximately $99/month). The website is well organized with an option to select ethical hacking courses suitable for a specific career path, e.g. penetration tester or network engineer, and even create your own syllabus. You can search for courses by skill type, level, or certification. When you sign up, you will be directed to your dashboard, which displays the courses you’ve completed or are busy with, your certifications, and even posts you’ve published to the Cybrary community.

This site is ideal if you want to build up a portfolio of knowledge, keep track of your progress, and ultimately choose one or more certifications.

3. EH Academy – The Complete Cyber Security & Hacking Course (Free – Beginner to Intermediate)

This ethical hacking course covers the basics of white hat hacking including a detailed video on how to set up a lab. You’ll also get an introduction to Nmap and Metasploit tools and learn basic Windows and Linux commands. A nice touch is that below each video you can comment or post questions to the instructor or other students.

Covers:

• Computer basics & introduction
• Setting up your lab
• Ethical hacking (basics to advanced) – information gathering

Duration:

• 1.5 days

Requirements:

• Reliable internet connection

More: For the advanced hacker, EH Academy offers a wide range of specialized ethical hacking courses, most of them paid (ranging from $50 to $200), e.g: “Using Python For Offensive Penetration Testing”, “Advanced Mobile Application Penetration Testing”, “iOS Application Penetration Testing Training”, “Metasploit training for Penetration testing & Ethical Hacking”, and “VoIP Hacking & Penetration Testing Training”.

4. Offensive Security – Metasploit Unleashed (Intermediate to Advanced – Free)

The in-depth Metasploit Unleashed (MSFU) ethical hacking course is provided free of charge by Offensive Security in order to raise awareness for underprivileged children in East Africa. It assumes you understand some fundamentals, e.g. command line interface commands, scripts, etc.

Covers:

• Everything you need to know to get started with Metasploit
• Hands-on practice from information gathering to writing a simple fuzzer

Duration:

• Self-paced

Requirements:

• Reliable internet connection
• A virtual machine (aka Hypervisor) to host your labs
• Minimum 10 gigabytes of storage space
• Sufficient RAM (check under Requirements in the Introduction section to calculate how much you will need)
• The bare-minimum requirement for VMware Player is a 400MHz or faster processor (500MHz recommended)
• Kali Linux (download under Requirements in the Introduction section)
• A vulnerable VMware virtual machine to scan and attack (download “Metasploitable” under Requirements in the Introduction section)

5. Cyber Degrees – Cryptography (University of Maryland) (Intermediate – Free)

By the end of this ethical hacking course, you’ll have a firm grasp of cryptographic primitives in wide use today and a knowledge of how to combine these in order to develop modern protocols for secure communication.

Covers:

• Foundations and practical applications of modern cryptography

Duration:

• 7 weeks

Requirements:

• Some experience covering discrete mathematics and basic probability
• Prior exposure to algorithms will be helpful
• Familiarity with programming in a C-like language
• Mathematical maturity

More: MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are free online college-level classes open to everyone. They are apparently “more popular than cheese.” They don’t count towards degree credits but will be appreciated by future employers as degree-level training. The method of instruction is usually video but instructors’ brains can be picked on virtual forums and during chat sessions. There are various types of assessments, from peer assessment to formal exams, depending on the course. Some of the courses have fixed schedules and most take between six to eight weeks to complete.

6. Cybrary

An online provider of digital security training, Cybrary offers multiple resources for the wannabe ethical hacker including a study guide to the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) exam and a micro-course on ethical hacking and penetrating testing with Kali Linux. It also hosts a few blog posts that explain what ethical hacking is and how students can use Cybrary to become an ethical hacker. One of those articles even sets forth a study program for what Cybrary-specific classes students should take if they hope to become an ethical hacker someday.

7. EC-Council

The International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants (EC-Council) offers the Certified Ethical Hacking (CEH) program, a track of study which many hail as the most advanced ethical hacking course in the world. The certification process exposes students to 18 comprehensive modules and 140 labs consisting of 270 attack technologies and 2,200 of the most common hacking tools. Enrollment in the course costs between $850 and $900 depending on the student’s country of residence. That amount doesn’t include the cost of application for the CEH exam, a four hour multiple-choice test consisting of 125 questions.