This course features Coursera Coach!

A smarter way to learn with interactive, real-time conversations that help you test your knowledge, challenge assumptions, and deepen your understanding as you progress through the course. Master advanced web application penetration testing by exploring SQL injection techniques, real-world attack scenarios, and modern web vulnerabilities in controlled lab environments. You'll develop practical skills to identify, analyze, and validate security weaknesses while gaining hands-on experience with industry-standard tools and intentionally vulnerable applications used by security professionals. The course begins with SQL injection fundamentals, where you'll learn to identify vulnerable inputs, validate SQL injection flaws, understand authentication bypass techniques, and explore GET-based attacks using UNION queries. You'll then progress to advanced SQL injection topics, including blind SQL injection, alternative testing methods, hexadecimal payloads, file operations, shell access concepts, and automated testing with SQLMap. Building on these techniques, you'll apply your knowledge within the OWASP Juice Shop environment by completing practical security challenges involving SQL injection, DOM-based XSS, XXE, authentication flaws, access control issues, request manipulation, cookie security, and business logic vulnerabilities. The course concludes with Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF), where you'll examine backend exploitation techniques and evaluate blacklist and whitelist filtering mechanisms in realistic scenarios. This course is intended for aspiring penetration testers, cybersecurity professionals, ethical hackers, and security researchers who have a foundational understanding of web application security and SQL concepts. Prior experience with Linux, HTTP, and introductory penetration testing is recommended. The course is designed at an Advanced difficulty level. By the end of the course, you will be able to assess SQL injection vulnerabilities, perform advanced web application penetration testing, use SQLMap and OWASP Juice Shop effectively, analyze complex security flaws such as SSRF and XXE, and conduct structured web security assessments within authorized testing environments.