student@hack3rs:~/learning/tools$ open paths
Guided Tool Learning Paths
These are free, teacher-style paths built on the tools catalog. Each path is sequenced to teach judgment: what question to ask, which tool to choose, how to validate output, and how to turn results into defensive action.
- $Pick one path based on your role, not based on tool popularity alone.
- $Complete each phase in order and keep notes/artifacts for every lab.
- $Stay in authorized lab/scope for dual-use tools and focus on defensive outcomes.
- $Repeat the path quarterly with harder scenarios to build real operational skill.
1. Blue Team Network Ops Path
Audience: Defenders focused on packet analysis, detection validation, and network troubleshooting
Duration: 8-12 weeks (repeatable lab cycle)
Start with packet visibility and protocol fundamentals, then move into detection, packet-at-scale workflows, and centralized telemetry. This path teaches how to answer network questions with evidence instead of guesswork.
1. Phase 1: Packet Visibility Basics
Goal: Learn how to capture and read traffic safely, and how to validate transport/protocol behavior.
Expected outcome: You can explain what happened on the wire, capture the right evidence, and validate whether a service problem is network, TLS, or application related.
2. Phase 2: Discovery and Validation
Goal: Map exposure and test reachability, then compare changes over time instead of rescanning blindly.
Expected outcome: You can produce repeatable exposure and change-validation workflows with clear notes, deltas, and follow-up actions.
3. Phase 3: Detection and NSM
Goal: Understand network telemetry and alerts, then validate what detections actually mean.
Expected outcome: You can correlate alerts with packet evidence, tune detections, and document what a rule is actually proving.
4. Phase 4: Platform Operations and Retrospective Analysis
Goal: Operate broader blue-team tooling and understand packet-at-scale/centralized telemetry workflows.
Expected outcome: You can move from single-tool packet work to platform-based triage and investigation workflows with better repeatability.
2. Wireless Defense Path
Audience: Defenders securing WLANs, validating wireless hardening, and training on rogue AP scenarios
Duration: 6-10 weeks (lab-first)
This path emphasizes passive observation first, then controlled/authorized wireless testing to validate controls, detections, and response playbooks.
1. Phase 1: Passive Wireless Situational Awareness
Goal: Build baselines of SSIDs, clients, channels, and expected wireless behavior before any intrusive testing.
Expected outcome: You can document a wireless baseline and explain the difference between unknown, unauthorized, and malicious wireless signals.
2. Phase 2: Controlled Wireless Auditing (Authorized Labs)
Goal: Understand WLAN attack mechanics and validate hardening in labs without turning the exercise into a demo-only workflow.
Expected outcome: You can explain how wireless tests map to defensive controls, and you can write remediation tasks instead of just showing a tool result.
3. Phase 3: Wireless Social Engineering and User-Facing Risk (Authorized Exercises)
Goal: Train awareness and detection teams on rogue AP / wireless phishing scenarios with clear approvals and privacy boundaries.
Expected outcome: You can run ethical, approved awareness scenarios with clear comms, logging, and after-action remediation plans.
3. Web App Defense Path
Audience: Defenders and AppSec learners validating web exposure, web auth flows, and remediation
Duration: 8-12 weeks (developer + defender labs)
Learn to observe HTTP(S) traffic, safely enumerate exposed content, validate common web issues in authorized scope, and turn findings into secure development and detection improvements.
1. Phase 1: Observe and Understand the App
Goal: Build protocol intuition and baseline normal HTTP(S) behavior before active testing.
Expected outcome: You can explain request/response flows, auth/session behavior, and where to capture evidence for web troubleshooting or appsec validation.
2. Phase 2: Exposure and Content Discovery (Authorized)
Goal: Validate web exposure safely and distinguish true findings from scanner noise.
Expected outcome: You can run scoped content discovery, document evidence, and translate findings into deploy/hardening tasks with owners.
3. Phase 3: AppSec Validation and Detection Feedback (Authorized Labs)
Goal: Validate SQLi-style risks and improve secure coding and monitoring based on evidence.
Expected outcome: You can connect app testing findings to remediation validation, detection tuning, and secure developer handoff notes.
4. AD / Windows Defense Path
Audience: Defenders working on Windows logging, identity security, AD hardening, and purple-team validation
Duration: 10-14 weeks (Windows lab + log pipeline recommended)
Focus on Windows and AD visibility first, then learn posture assessment and graph-based risk mapping, and finally practice authorized simulation tools only as a way to improve detections and hardening.
1. Phase 1: Windows Visibility and Endpoint Evidence
Goal: Learn what Windows/endpoint evidence looks like and how to collect/query it reproducibly.
Expected outcome: You can collect and interpret endpoint evidence safely, and correlate host findings with network and identity context.
2. Phase 2: AD Posture and Privilege Path Understanding
Goal: Assess AD posture and understand graph-based privilege relationships before running complex simulations.
Expected outcome: You can explain AD risk in concrete terms and prioritize hardening steps tied to owners and change plans.
3. Phase 3: Authorized Validation and Purple-Team Learning
Goal: Use dual-use tools only in approved labs/exercises to validate logging, detections, and hardening assumptions.
Expected outcome: You can design a purple-team exercise that improves logs, detections, and hardening rather than just reproducing commands.
