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Website Hacking / Penetration Testing (Udemy.com)

Hack websites and web applications like black hat hackers and secure them like experts.

Created by: Zaid Sabih

Last updated November 2025

Our take

Based on the ratings of 23,208 students, a sample of their written reviews and the syllabus, as the course stood in November 2025. No course pays to be reviewed.

This is a web hacking course built around labs. It runs about 10 hours over 100 lectures and 20 sections. It starts with building a hacking lab, a few Linux basics and how websites work. Then it moves through information gathering, file upload, code execution, file inclusion, SQL injection, XSS, session management, brute force and post exploitation. Zaid Sabih assumes no hacking or programming background, and the requirements ask only for basic IT skills and a computer with 4GB of RAM. It suits curious beginners and web developers who want to see how attacks actually work.

Reviewers like the teaching. They describe it as clear, easy to follow and full of useful labs, and one beginner says they understood most of it without trouble. The complaints are about age and overlap. A 2-star reviewer says some tools no longer work as shown and names Maltego, because the free edition the course relies on is gone. A 3-star reviewer calls it a replica of the instructor's broader ethical hacking course. Another mentions videos freezing. Low ratings are rare, though: 423 of 23,208 reviews are 1 or 2 stars.

The course was last updated in November 2025, but reviewers still flag aged content, so expect to sort out a few tool setups on your own. Ten hours is short for this much ground, and there are no quizzes or exercises, so the learning happens in the labs. Treat it as a solid first pass at web security, not a bug bounty toolkit. Beginners can start here with confidence. Anyone who has done the instructor's other ethical hacking course should check the overlap first.

Best forBeginners who want a guided, hands-on tour of common web bugs like SQL injection and XSS, with no Linux background.
Skip it ifYou already took the same instructor's broad ethical hacking course, or want current bug bounty depth.

Pros

  • Starts from zero: lab setup, Linux basics and how websites work come before any attacks
  • Covers the usual web bugs in order, from file upload and SQL injection to XSS and CSRF
  • Reviewers call the teaching clear and easy to follow, even for beginners
  • Post exploitation gets its own section of 12 lectures and about 88 minutes

Cons

  • Some tools have aged; one reviewer says the free Maltego edition it uses no longer exists
  • One reviewer calls it a rerun of the instructor's Learn Ethical Hacking course
  • Only about 10 hours, with no quizzes or exercises to test what was learned
The teacher is really good, but the content might be a little outdated, but it’s the best way to start
moshe chami, a student

Fits true beginners; the requirements ask only for basic IT skills and 4GB of RAM, no Linux or coding.

Featured in our guide: The 10 Best Cyber Security and Ethical Hacking Courses on Udemy in 2026

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What you will learn

  • 100+ Videos (10+ hours) to teach you website hacking from scratch.
  • 50+ hands-on real-life website hacking examples - from simple to advanced.
  • Discover, exploit and mitigate a number of dangerous web vulnerabilities.
  • Hack cloud servers using these vulnerabilities.
  • No prior knowledge in Linux, hacking or programming is required.
  • Advanced post exploitation - pivoting, dump the database, privilege escalation, etc
  • Bypass security & advanced exploitation of these vulnerabilities.
  • Bypass security & filters.
  • Create a hacking lab.
  • Intercept requests using a proxy.
  • Adopt SQL queries to discover and exploit SQL injections in secure pages.
  • Gain full control over cloud servers using SQL injections.
  • Discover & exploit blind SQL injections.
  • Install Kali Linux - a penetration testing operating system.
  • Learn linux commands and how to interact with the terminal.
  • Learn linux basics.
  • Understand how websites & web applications work.
  • Understand how browsers communicate with websites.
  • Gather sensitive information about websites.
  • Discover servers, technologies & services used on target website.
  • Discover emails & sensitive data associated with a specific website.
  • Find all subdomains associated with a website.
  • Discover unpublished directories & files associated with a target website.
  • Find all websites hosted on the same server as the target website.
  • Discover, exploit and fix file upload vulnerabilities.
  • Exploit advanced file upload vulnerabilities & gain full control over the target website.
  • Discover, exploit and fix code execution vulnerabilities.
  • Exploit advanced code execution vulnerabilities & gain full control over the target website.
  • Discover, exploit & fix local file inclusion vulnerabilities.
  • Exploit local file inclusion vulnerabilities to to get a shell.
  • Exploit advanced local file inclusion vulnerabilities & gain full control over the target website.
  • Exploit advanced remote file inclusion vulnerabilities & gain full control over the target website.
  • Discover, fix, and exploit SQL injection vulnerabilities.
  • Bypass login forms and login as admin using SQL injections.
  • Writing SQL queries to find databases, tables and sensitive data such as usernames ad passwords using SQL injections
  • Bypass filtering, and login as admin without password using SQL injections.
  • Bypass filtering and security measurements.
  • Read / Write files to the server using SQL injections.
  • Patch SQL injections quickly.
  • The right way to write SQL queries to prevent SQL injections.
  • Discover basic & advanced reflected XSS vulnerabilities.
  • Discover basic & advanced stored XSS vulnerabilities.
  • How to use BeEF framwork.
  • Hook users to BeEF using reflected & XSS vulnerabilities.
  • Steal credentials from hooked targets.
  • Run javascript code on hooked targets.
  • Create Windows backdoors.
  • Hack computers using XSS vulnerabilities.
  • Fix XSS vulnerabilities & protect yourself from them as a user.
  • Brute force & wordlist attacks.
  • Create a wordlist or a dictionary.
  • Launch a wordlist attack and guess admin's password.
  • Discover all of the above vulnerabilities automatically using a web proxy.
  • Run system commands on the target webserver.
  • Access the file system (navigate between directories, read/write files).
  • Download, upload files to / from hacked servers.
  • Bypass security measurements.
  • Access all websites on the same webserver.
  • Connect to the database and execute SQL queries or download the whole database to the local machine.
  • Discover, exploit and mitigate CSRF vulnerabilities.

Course content

20 sections · 100 lectures · 10 hours of video 1 article

  1. 1Course Introduction 1 free preview1 lecture · 2 min
  2. 2Preparation - Creating a Hacking Lab6 lectures · 49 min
  3. 3Preparation - Linux Basics3 lectures · 19 min
  4. 4Website Basics2 lectures · 11 min
  5. 5Information Gathering9 lectures · 56 min
  6. 6File Upload Vulnerabilities 2 free previews6 lectures · 38 min
  7. 7Code Execution Vulnerabilities3 lectures · 19 min
  8. 8Local File Inclusion Vulnerabilities (LFI)2 lectures · 13 min
  9. 9Remote File Inclusion Vulnerabilities (RFI)4 lectures · 18 min
  10. 10SQL Injection Vulnerabilities2 lectures · 9 min

Who it is for

The instructor says it suits

  • Anybody interested in learning website & web application hacking / penetration testing.
  • Anybody interested in learning how to secure websites & web applications from hacker.
  • Web developers so they can create secure web application & secure their existing ones.
  • Web admins so they can secure their websites.

What you need before you start

  • Basic IT Skills.
  • No Linux, programming or hacking knowledge required.
  • Computer with a minimum of 4GB ram/memory.
  • Operating System: Windows / Apple Mac OS / Linux.

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Course Description

Last Update: May 2024


Notes:

  1. Although website hacking is covered in one of my other courses, that course only covers the basics where this course dives much deeper in this topic covering more techniques, more vulnerabilities, advanced exploitation, advanced post exploitation, bypassing security and more!

  2. This course focuses on website hacking, I have a different course that teaches bug hunting from scratch.


Welcome to my comprehensive course on Website hacking / penetration testing. This course assumes you have NO prior knowledge in hacking, it starts with you from scratch and takes you step-by-step to an advanced level, being able to hack websites like black-hat hackers and secure them like security experts!


This course is highly practical but doesn't neglect the theory, we'll start with basics to teach you how websites work  and install the needed software (on Windows, Linux and Apple Mac OS). Then we'll start hacking straight away. You'll learn everything by example, by discovering vulnerabilities and exploiting them to hack websites. No boring dry lectures


Before jumping into hacking, you'll first learn how to gather comprehensive information about the target website. Then the course is divided into a number of sections, each aims to teach you a common vulnerability from the OWASP top 10 most common security threats. Each section takes you through a number of hands-on examples to teach you the cause of the security bug or vulnerability and how to discover it and exploit it in a number of scenarios, from simple to advanced, ultimately allowing you to hack the target website. You'll also learn advanced techniques to bypass filters and security, escalate your privileges, access the database and much more post-exploitation techniques.  As we do this I will also introduce you to different hacking and security concepts, tools and techniques. Everything will be taught through examples and hands-on practicals, there will be no useless or boring lectures!


Here's a more detailed breakdown of the course content:

1. Information Gathering - In this section you'll learn how to gather comprehensive information about a target website, you'll learn how to discover its DNS information, the services used, subdomains, un-published directories, sensitive files, user emails, websites on the same server and even the hosting provider. This information is crucial as it expands the attack surface, increasing our changes of successfully hacking the target website.


2. Discovery, Exploitation & Mitigation - In this section you will learn how to discover, exploit and mitigate a common vulnerabilities from the OWASP top 10 most common security threats. This section is divided into a number of subsections. Each subsection takes you through a number of hands-on examples to teach you the cause of the vulnerability, how to discover it and how to exploit it in a number of scenarios, from simple to advanced, ultimately allowing you to hack the target website. You'll also learn advanced techniques to bypass filters and security. Finally we will analyse the code causing these vulnerabilities and d,

Here's a list of the main vulnerabilities that will be covered in this section.

    • Information Disclosure.

    • File upload.

    • Code Execution.

    • Local File Inclusion.

    • Remote File Inclusion.

    • SQL Injection.

    • Cross Site Scripting (XSS).

    • Insecure Session Management.

    • Brute Force & Dictionary Attacks.

    • CSRF (Client-Side Request Forgery).


3. Post Exploitation - In this section you will learn what can you do with the access you gained by exploiting the above vulnerabilities. You will learn how to convert reverse shell access to a Weevely access and vice versa,  how to execute system commands on the target server, navigate between directories, access other websites on the same server, upload/download files, access the database and even download the whole database to your local machine. You will also learn how to bypass security, privilege escalation and do all of the above with limited permissions on the server ! 


You'll use the following tools to achieve the above:

  • Kali Linux.

  • Weevely.

  • THC-Hydra .

  • Netcat .

  • Dev tools.

  • Burp Suite.

  • OWASP Zap.

  • Metasploit.

  • BeEF.

  • Dirb.

  • Maltego.

  • Knockpy.


With this course you get 24/7 support, so if you have any questions you can post them in the Q&A section and we'll respond to you within 15 hours.


Checkout the curriculum and the course teaser for more info!


Notes:

  • This course is created for educational purposes only and all the attacks are launched in my own lab or against systems that I have permission to test.

  • This course is totally a product of Zaid Sabih & zSecurity, no other organization is associated with it or a certification exam. Although, you will receive a Course Completion Certification from Udemy, apart from that NO OTHER ORGANIZATION IS INVOLVED.

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Instructor Details

Zaid Sabih

My name is Zaid Al-Quraishi, I am a professional ethical hacker, computer scientist, and the founder and CEO of zSecurity & Bug-Bounty. I am passionate about utilising my skills to improve the security of organisations and individuals by identifying and resolving vulnerabilities in their systems.

I have in-depth knowledge and experience in the fields of ethical hacking & cyber security, and I have helped over 1 million students worldwide on multiple teaching platforms to gain a better understanding of the subject.

My companies, zSecurity & Bug-Bounty, specialise in providing ethical hacking services and managed bug-bounty programs to help organisations identify and remediate vulnerabilities in their systems.


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Reviews

4.6

23,208 ratings on Udemy

Select a bar to show only those reviews.Select the bar again to show every rating.

By Tang Peter Riek on 8/6/2026

yes l appreciate the contents of the course so far but am yet to learn more as l advance further in the course

By Bhaumik Dhebar on 5/6/2026

As far as this course is easy to understand and easy to practise with trainer. Thank you so much for providing valuable course to the audience :)

By Devki Nandan Singh on 4/18/2026

A very beautiful Explaination of topics... As a beginner i understood most of it without any problem.. Thankyou Zaid Sir.

By Asahel Méndez Huerta on 4/9/2026

De momento esta interesante y aun que es algo que ya hice, es el primer curso que veo que enseña a como activar la virtualización.

By Ewan Bailey on 12/17/2025

Course material is really outdated. Lot's of tools do not function as advertised, especially Maltego - e.g. the course explains using MaltegoCE as a free version but this no longer exists.

By Kenan Ozturgut on 12/3/2025

Zaid is simply a superb instructor and incrementally works through complex processes in a clear and comprehensible manner.

By Stuart Grayson on 11/30/2025

Good introduction, and good detail for hacking lab - at a good pace, Clear to follow video's /tutorials, and easy to practice in own VM/KALI install via resources, recommended

By Barry Bragg on 11/5/2025

We use several tools to scan our public facing websites, but we also need to be aware of the tools that malicious actors use to glean information in order to penetrate / hack our websites. This course will familiarize me and my team on these continually changing techniques. I highly recommend this instructor as he is thorough and easily understood.

By Andreas Lortz on 11/4/2025

Zaid Sabih’s Website Hacking / Penetration Testing course is outstanding. Clear, hands-on, and packed with real-world techniques — every module translated theory into practical skills I could use immediately. Zaid explains complex concepts with patience and precision, and the labs are challenging but perfectly guided. Highly recommended for anyone serious about becoming a competent web penetration tester.

By Greg Notske on 10/31/2025

Solid background and reasons why the techniques work. Good reviews of most common tools used for penetration testing. Also enjoyed the mitigations sections.

By Gerald Mbuchu Kariuki on 11/14/2020

Yes ... I think ...its still early to comment

By Nadav Polus on 11/14/2020

Zaid is a great teacher!

Showing 12 of 319 reviews

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Overall Score : 92 / 100