I kept hearing about website defacements in the news. Indian government portals getting their homepages replaced with political messages. Hospital websites going down. It always felt distant — until I decided actually to understand how it happens.

So I spun up a vulnerable VM (Basic_Pentesting_1) and tried to break it myself. Took me from zero — a blank network — to full root access and a defaced homepage.

Here's everything I did.

Lab Setup

Role