Day 24/90 of My Personal Cybersecurity Challenge 🔐 Today, I got my first real introduction to exploitation. We went from understanding vulnerabilities to learning how an attacker can actually take advantage of them in an authorized lab environment. I learned the relationship between: Exploit → Payload → Shell We also explored Metasploit, Meterpreter, and msfvenom, and the difference between automated and manual exploitation. One thing that stood out to me: Credentials can open more doors than exploits. We looked at password hashing, wordlists, and tools like Hydra and John the Ripper to understand how credential attacks work. We also had a live exploitation session using Metasploit and learned why public exploits and Proofs of Concept should never be blindly trusted. Today's class made ethical hacking feel much more practical. I'm not just learning what attacks are anymore. I'm learning how they work, how to test them responsibly, and how defenders can understand them. Day 24 complete. 🧑🏾‍💻 Still learning. Still practising. Still building. #Cybersecurity #EthicalHacking #PenetrationTesting #Metasploit #Hajime2026