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CompTIA Exam Syllabus

PT0-003 syllabus, skills measured, and exam topics

CompTIA PenTest+ validates your ability to identify, mitigate, and report system vulnerabilities. Covering all stages of penetration testing across attack surfaces like cloud, web apps, APIs, and IoT, it emphasizes hands-on skills such as vulnerability management and lateral movement. This certification equips you with the expertise to advance your career as a penetration tester or security consultant.

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Skills measured by domain

Use the weighting table to decide where to spend the most study time.

Domain Weight
Engagement management 13%
Reconnaissance and enumeration 21%
Vulnerability discovery and analysis 17%
Attacks and exploits 35%
Post-exploitation and lateral movement 14%

Detailed outline

Scan each section as a working study checklist instead of one long wall of text.

Engagement management (13%)

  • Planning and scoping: defining rules of engagement, testing windows, and target selection.
  • Legal and ethical compliance: ensuring authorization letters, mandatory reporting, and adherence to regulations.
  • Collaboration and communication: aligning with stakeholders through peer reviews, escalation paths, and risk articulation.
  • Penetration test reports: creating reports with executive summaries, findings, and remediation recommendations.

Reconnaissance and enumeration (21%)

  • Active and passive reconnaissance: gathering information using open-source intelligence (OSINT), network sniffing, and protocol scanning.
  • Enumeration techniques: performing DNS enumeration, service discovery, and directory enumeration.
  • Reconnaissance tools: using tools like Nmap, Wireshark, and Shodan for information gathering.
  • Script modification: customizing Python, PowerShell, and Bash scripts for reconnaissance and enumeration.

Vulnerability discovery and analysis (17%)

  • Vulnerability scans: conducting authenticated, unauthenticated, static application security testing (SAST) and dynamic application security testing (DAST).
  • Result analysis: validating findings, troubleshooting configurations, and identifying false positives.
  • Discovery tools: using tools like Nessus, Nikto, and OpenVAS for vulnerability discovery.

Attacks and exploits (35%)

  • Network attacks: performing VLAN hopping, on-path attacks, and service exploitation.
  • Authentication attacks: executing brute-force attacks, pass-the-hash, and credential stuffing.
  • Host-based attacks: conducting privilege escalation, process injection, and credential dumping.
  • Web application attacks: performing SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and directory traversal.
  • Cloud-based attacks: exploiting container escapes, metadata service attacks, and identity and access management (IAM) misconfiguration.
  • AI attacks: explaining prompt injection and model manipulation against artificial intelligence systems.

Post-exploitation and lateral movement (14%)

  • Post-exploitation activities: establishing persistence, performing lateral movement, and cleaning up artifacts.
  • Documentation: creating attack narratives and providing remediation recommendations.

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  • Perform: Learn
  • Best for:: Best for those looking to build skills, learn concepts, and gain hands-on experience. No prior related job role experience needed.
  • Primary purpose:: Comprehensive learning with robust set of lab activities in real and simulated environments to practice skills and job readiness. ​
  • Contains:: Instructional content, video, interactives, labs (simulated and live virtual machines), assessments, practice tests
  • Estimated duration:: 30–60 hours
  • Learn more about CertMaster Perform: Learn more about CertMaster Learn

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