Penetration Test: Cyber Security

A full vulnerability assessment and penetration test conducted against a simulated corporate network (SOA Enterprises)

Working across a host-only isolated lab of four VMs (Kali attacker, Metasploitable, Windows 10 + WebGoat, Kali + DVWA), this project combined network reconnaissance, port scanning, automated vulnerability and web application scanning, manual exploitation validation, and packet capture analysis to identify and verify real security weaknesses, including a critical vsftpd backdoor, outdated SSH/Apache services, and missing HTTP security headers. The report concludes with prioritised mitigation recommendations, an assessment of the target organisation's incident response maturity, and a discussion of the legal and ethical boundaries observed throughout testing.