Week 6: Midterm Practical

A proctored 3-hour mini-engagement. Phases 1-4 compressed into a single session. You receive a mock scope document and submit a finding summary.

Format

The midterm is a proctored practical assessment, not a lecture week. There is no assigned reading beyond the Week 5 material.

Time: 3 hours from receipt of scope document to submission of finding summary.

Setting: Instructor-designated lab VM (single host, documented intentional vulnerabilities). You work individually on your own Kali VM against the lab network.

What you receive at the start

• A one-page mock Statement of Work identifying the fictional client, the authorized IP, the testing window, and what is prohibited (denial-of-service attacks; exploitation of any host outside the stated IP)
• The target IP address

What you submit at the end

A one-page finding summary in the following format:

Finding summary: [your name], [date]

Scope: [IP and testing window from SOW]

PTES phases completed:

• Pre-engagement: [brief note -- did you document the ROE before scanning? What authorization artifact did you note?]
• Intelligence Gathering: [tools used; key findings]
• Vulnerability Analysis: [scanner used; number of raw findings; number after triage]
• Threat Modeling: [which finding is highest-priority and why]

One observation about what you would do differently with more time.

Grading

See INSTRUCTOR-GUIDE.md midterm section.

Key criteria:

• At least two verified findings (40%)
• Evidence of all four pre-midterm PTES phases in the finding summary (30%)
• Documentation quality: timestamps, tools named, findings described clearly (30%)

Preparation

No new material this week beyond consolidating Weeks 1-5. Review:

• The seven PTES phases and which four the midterm covers
• CVSS v3.1 base metric components (you will need to compute at least one score under time pressure)
• Nmap scan syntax: -sV -sC -p- -oA; Masscan broad discovery
• Nessus Essentials: know how to create and run a scan without UI fumbling
• Nuclei: verify nuclei -update-templates runs without error
• The triage three-question workflow: real? exploitable? business impact?

Have your Kali VM booted and your tools verified before the midterm starts. Tool installation time counts against your 3 hours.

What's next

Week 7 is exploitation: taking the verified, triaged findings from the vulnerability analysis phase and running exploits. The three highest-priority findings from your Lab 5 spreadsheet are Week 7's first targets. The midterm finding summary is the second input.