Penetration Testing Guide: Real-World Methodology (Recon to Exploitation) [2026]
What is Penetration Testing? Complete Beginner Guide 2026 — How It Works, Types, Tools & Career What is Penetration Testing? Complete Beginner Guide 2026 — How It Works, All Types, Real Tools & Career Roadmap By Amardeep Maroli | April 10, 2026 | Penetration Testing, Ethical Hacking, Cybersecurity | 16 min read Home About Contact 🎯 Why I'm Writing This Guide — My Personal Learning Journey Who I Am: MCA student from Kerala, India • Commerce background (NOT computer science) • No IT job experience • Learning pentesting through hands-on labs Why This Post Exists: My first penetration testing attempt took 3 hours. I was testing a vulnerable web application in a lab. My goal: find all vulnerabilities and document them in a report. I found exactly 2 vulnerabilities in 3 hours: an SQL injection and an XSS. I was proud. ...