Online Course in Ethical Hacking 7,5 hp

In this course, students learn ethical hacking in order audit and improve the cybersecurity of computer networks. At the start of the course, students are confronted with a (rigged) corporate network environment. The objective is to penetrate the network and exfiltrate valuable information. This will require exploiting vulnerabilities, installing trojans, dumping hashes, cracking passwords, breaching firewalls, spoofing servers, cracking wifi networks, and more.

KTH Contract teaching – Uppdragsutbildning

Dates: 1 September – 5 December 2025
Expected workload: 15h/week.
Cost: 25 000 SEK. Your employer will be charged for the course.
Credits: 7,5 credits are awarded in the LADOK system.
Where: Student-controlled schedule. No physical meetings, you can enjoy the course wherever in the world.

Note: Contract teaching is only available through your employer. The couse is not available to private persons.

Register here by 31 July

To the course application

Read about the course in the media

Han utbildar företagare till hackare (DI)
Vithattar blir svarta på KTH (Voister)
Kurser i etisk hackning ska öka it-säkerhet (Radio P1 Ekot)
Den goda hackern (Radio P1 Uppkopplad)
KTH öppnar sin utbildning i etisk hackning – företagen också välkomna (Computer Sweden)
Ny KTH-kurs ska lära företag att tänka som hackare (Ny Teknik)
Nu kan du plugga till hackare på KTH (Computer Sweden)
KTH utbildar i etisk hackning (Radio P3)
Swedish University Offers ‘Ethical Hacking' Courses for 'Greater IT Security' (Sputnik news)
Шведский ВУЗ будет готовить хакеров (Kompravda)

Learning Objectives

After passing the course, the student should, at an introductory level, be able to

establish resources to support offensive security operations
perform reconnaissance and discovery to plan operations
access credentials, such as account names, passwords and access tokens
achieve initial access to networks and systems
execute malicious code on remote devices
establish command and control capabilities to communicate with compromised systems
elevate privileges on systems to gain higher-level permissions
persist on networks by maintaining access across interruptions
move laterally, pivoting through the computing environment
avoid detection by network defenders
collect and exfiltrate data from computing environments
assess the security of computer systems, applications, and services
carry out legal and ethical security testing.

This will provide students with a practical understanding of the capabilities and possibilities of an attacker, in order to evaluate the cybersecurity of computer networks.

Guest Lectures

In addition to the course material available exclusively to students, we also offer a set of guest lectures. In 2024, those were as follows:

Mattias Wåhlén, Threat Intelligence Expert at Truesec
The World of Cybercriminals
September 15, 10:15-12:00
F1 (Alfvénsalen), Lindstedtsvägen 22, KTH Campus

Johan Berggren, Staff Security Engineer, Google
Incident Response & Digital Forensics at Google
September 22, 10:15-12:00
F1 (Alfvénsalen), Lindstedtsvägen 22, KTH Campus

Staff from the Swedish Security Service
Ethical hacking at the Swedish Security Service
September 29, 10:15-12:00
F1 (Alfvénsalen), Lindstedtsvägen 22, KTH Campus

Anne-Marie Eklund Löwinder, Founder and CEO Amelsec
The rise and shine of cyber security in Sweden
October 6, 13:15-15:00
F1 (Alfvénsalen), Lindstedtsvägen 22, KTH Campus

Prerequisites

As a prerequisite, participants are expected to have basic programming skills. Knowledge about operating systems (Linux in particular) and communication networks is also strongly recommended. No previous experience of information security is required.