CPEH case studies
CPEH · Put your knowledge to work in context.
The Certified Professional Ethical Hacker (CPEH) is a vendor-neutral, hands-on credential aimed at practitioners who want to demonstrate that they can plan and carry out an authorized penetration test rather than simply recite tool names. It suits security analysts, system and network administrators moving into offensive roles, SOC staff who need to understand attacker tradecraft, and consultants who must produce defensible findings for clients. The CPEH case studies are 5 cases and about 4,577 words.
1The SaaS Link You Were Not Authorized to Follow
Meridian Health engaged your firm under a statement of work that authorizes testing of the 10.20.0.0/24 range and seven named external FQDNs, between 09:00 and 18:00 local time, with no denial-of-service techniques, no social engineering, and an explicit exclusion for 'systems operated by third parties.' On day two, while authenticated as a low-privilege test account on claims.meridian.example, you notice the login page pulls JavaScript from portal.claimsprovider.example, a SaaS clearinghouse, and the bundle calls an API in 198.51.100.0/24. Later, the IT operations manager messages you: 'While you're in there, can you look at why the billing SQL box at 10.20.5.9 keeps crashing?
874 words, about 4 min21,247 Findings, Three People, Five Days
Northwind Logistics approved a four-hour weekly scanning window for its 512-server PCI zone. Your authenticated scan using a dedicated service account completes with 1,247 findings: 96 rated critical or high and 812 medium.
903 words, about 5 min3Kerberoast to Domain Admin With the EDR Watching
Contoso's internal Active Directory engagement covers 60 servers, 900 users, and two domain controllers. The rules of engagement prohibit LSASS memory access, any ransomware simulation, and disabling security tooling; the EDR is in blocking mode, and the client requires a phone call to the SOC the first time an alert fires.
921 words, about 5 min4Blind Injection Behind the WAF on the Order Portal
Vantage Retail's customer portal is an ASP.NET application behind a WAF that returns 403 for UNION, for plain-text information schema, and for common SQL keywords. The 'sort' query parameter is concatenated into an ORDER BY clause.
947 words, about 5 min5The Report the Board Will Actually Read
After a three-week internal and external engagement for a PCI DSS Level 1 merchant, you have 88 findings, 7 of them critical, and a report due to a CISO who presents to the board in ten days. The remediation team is three people with a monthly patch window.
932 words, about 5 min