A hacking lab for my kidLive
A sealed, three-stage offensive-security range built to teach a beginner real penetration testing safely: reconnaissance, exploitation, pivoting, web attacks, and full Active Directory compromise, written as a narrated field manual.
Some people teach their kids to fish. I built mine a hacking lab.
This is a real offensive-security range, sealed off from the house and the internet by a firewall, with a curriculum written as a narrated "field manual" a beginner can actually follow. The premise is simple: every machine in it exists to be attacked, so there is no line to cross and no way to cause trouble. It teaches the exact mindset a professional penetration tester works from, only hack what you are allowed to hack, on infrastructure where everything is fair game.
What's in it
- A Kali attack box on its own network, and a target network the student has to discover for themselves. The first lesson is the first job of any real attacker: find the machines. Nobody hands you a map.
- Three stages, rising in difficulty. Stage one is the classic kill chain against a deliberately vulnerable Linux host: reconnaissance with Nmap, scanning and enumeration, exploitation with Metasploit, password cracking, and privilege escalation. Stage two adds command injection, pivoting from one compromised host into a network the attacker couldn't originally reach, and SQL injection against a web app. Stage three is a full Windows Active Directory attack: enumeration, password spraying, Kerberoasting, and DCSync with pass-the-hash to take the domain.
- Ten flags, four crown jewels, and two hidden easter eggs, so progress is concrete and the wins feel earned. A flag tracker, a cheat sheet, and a separate answer key for the parent are built in.
How it was built
The whole manual was written with Claude Fable: the lab topology, the stage design, every guided step, the hints for when a beginner gets stuck, and the "rules of engagement" that come first and matter most. It runs from a single self-contained HTML file, so there is nothing to install to read it.
It is a teaching tool, not a product, but it is the clearest example of what this company believes: that the way to actually learn a system, whether you are ten or forty, is to build it, break it, and be trusted with the real thing in a place where breaking it is the point.