Skip to content

Lab Environment & Safety Rules

Every lab in this course follows these rules. They reflect how professional IT and security teams work.

1. Authorised systems only

  • Run labs on localhost, WSL2, your own virtual machines, or systems you have explicit written permission to test.
  • Never scan, probe, brute-force or capture traffic on networks or hosts you do not own or administer. That includes employer, school, public Wi-Fi and internet hosts. Unauthorised scanning is illegal in many countries (for example under the IT Act 2000 in India and the Computer Misuse Act in the UK).
  • Network discovery labs (Nmap, Days 20 and 27) target 127.0.0.1, your own VMs, or scanme.nmap.org, which the Nmap project explicitly permits for light testing.

2. Snapshots and backups before changes

Before any lab that changes permissions, firewall rules, services, users or system configuration:

  • VM: take a snapshot.
  • WSL: wsl --export Ubuntu-24.04 $HOME\wsl-backup.tar
  • Windows: create a restore point (Checkpoint-Computer -Description "Before Day 18 lab" in an elevated Windows PowerShell 5.1), and export what you will change (for example netsh advfirewall export C:\Backup\fw.wfw).
  • Files: copy the original with a timestamp (cp -a file file.bak.$(date +%F)).

3. No real credentials

  • Use throwaway lab accounts (student, labuser1) and passwords that you use nowhere else.
  • Never paste real passwords, API keys, tokens or private keys into scripts, screenshots, tickets or this course's repository.

4. Destructive commands are always explained first

Commands that delete, overwrite or disrupt (rm -r, Remove-Item -Recurse, kill -9, Stop-Service, firewall changes) are marked with a warning, explained, and preceded by a preview (ls, -WhatIf) step.

5. Never disable security controls as a workaround

If a lab fails because of the firewall, antivirus, SELinux/AppArmor or execution policy, diagnose why. Do not turn the control off. Where a control must be adjusted, the lesson shows the narrowest, reversible change, and how to undo it.

6. Least privilege

Work as a normal user. Use sudo or an elevated PowerShell only for the specific command that needs it, then return to the normal session.

~/lpm-lab/            # Linux practice root
$HOME\lpm-lab\        # Windows practice root
    day01/ day02/ ...  # one folder per day
    reports/           # output of course scripts