Acknowledgments

This textbook stands on the shoulders of the security community — researchers, practitioners, educators, and advocates who have spent decades building the field of ethical hacking into a respected profession.

To the Pioneers

We owe a debt to those who demonstrated that understanding attacks is essential to building defenses: the early security researchers who faced legal threats for disclosing vulnerabilities, the penetration testers who formalized their craft into repeatable methodologies, and the educators who brought offensive security into academic curricula.

To the Open Source Community

The tools that make ethical hacking possible — Nmap, Metasploit, Burp Suite Community Edition, Wireshark, Kali Linux, BloodHound, and hundreds of others — represent countless hours of volunteer labor. This book teaches with these tools, and we are grateful to their creators and maintainers.

To the Bug Bounty Platforms

HackerOne, Bugcrowd, Intigriti, and other platforms have created legal pathways for security researchers to test real systems and get paid for making the internet safer. Their work has transformed "hacker" from a pejorative into a job title.

To the Educators

Security professors, CTF organizers, HackTheBox and TryHackMe creators, conference speakers, and YouTube educators — you make this knowledge accessible. Many of the pedagogical approaches in this book are inspired by your work.

To the Defenders

The blue team practitioners, incident responders, and SOC analysts who deal with the consequences of the vulnerabilities we find — your perspective informs every "Blue Team Perspective" sidebar in this book. Offense and defense are two sides of the same coin.

To the Students

Finally, to you — the student reading this book. The cybersecurity field needs you. Your curiosity, your determination, and your commitment to using these skills ethically will help make the digital world safer for everyone.

Welcome to the community.