Malwareless Adversarial Emulation (The Course)
Course Info
This course includes 1 attempt.
Welcome
Hello and welcome to Malwareless Adversarial Emulation: Living off the Knowledge.
If this is your first time reading content from me, I hope you enjoy the journey ahead. This course is designed to take you through intermediate approaches to red teaming, focusing on situational awareness, decision-making, and using your knowledge to assess and adapt to your environments.
Who This Course Is For
Operators, Builders, Defenders — and the Curious
This course is designed for:
- Offensive practitioners
- Internal red teams
- Detection engineers
- Defensive roles want to understand real adversary behaviour.
You don’t need to be a full-time red teamer to benefit. If you’re building detections, validating controls, or simply trying to sharpen your adversary thinking, this course will give you the hands-on tradecraft, mindset, and structure to level up your work.
We’ll walk through the “how” and the “why,” ensuring that everything you learn has both tactical and strategic value.
Philosophy of Malwareless Red Teaming
Not everything in red teaming revolves around Command and Control (C2).
Some of the most successful adversaries operate:
- Without malware
- Without implants
- By blending into their environment
- By exploiting native capabilities to reduce noise and avoid detection
Effective red teaming isn’t just about execution — it’s about understanding.
Great operators read documentation, study technologies, and exploit flawed assumptions—the broader your knowledge, the better your decision-making.
What You’ll Learn
This course is for practitioners who want to:
- Emulate adversaries without malware
- Operate without traditional C2 infrastructure
- Leave a minimal footprint
- Use proxy chains, SOCKS tunnels, and native tooling
- Navigate hybrid environments
- Escalate access and move laterally
- Abuse pipelines and pivot in cloud environments
- Deliver high-quality offensive documentation
This is a course about how real red team operations are conducted — and how they should be read.
Course Format
When you buy Malwareless Adversarial Emulation: Living off the Knowledge, you get:
- Lifetime access to all course content and future updates
- Video walkthroughs — Bite-sized and focused, designed to be easily digestible
- Written explainers — Each module includes written content that walks you through core ideas and leads directly into lab exercises
- Hands-on labs — You’ll build these yourself to reinforce the concepts and workflows covered.
- Automation — Reduce setup overhead and focus on the thinking behind the operation
- Downloadable extras — Some chapters come with templates, scripts, and other valuable materials to support your workflow
Course Modules
- Module 0: Adversary Tradecraft and Operational Planning
- Module 1: Lab Bootstrapping and Operator Automation
- Module 2: Initial Access Without Payloads
- Module 3: Malwareless Access: Proxy Chains and Tunnel Discipline
- Module 4: Situational Awareness for the Quiet Operator
- Module 5: Lateral Movement and Native Execution
- Module 6: Pipeline Abuse
- Module 7: Cloud Posture and Pivoting
- Module 8: Modern Privilege Escalation and ADCS Abuse
- Module 9: Defensive Thinking While Offence is Live
- Module 10: Read Teaming: Documentation as an Offensive Weapon
- Module 11: Threat Intelligence and Staying Ahead
- Module 12: Operator Health and Sustainable Ops
A Word on Piracy
Any course will be pirated at some point. So, if you’re reading this and you’ve downloaded it without paying, I’m humbled you thought it was good enough to pirate.
Course Material
Instructors
Andy began his career in IT by fixing other people’s computers and rescuing data from the brink, before transitioning into the world of offensive security. These days, he’s a seasoned red teamer and penetration tester by trade, with a passion for research, tooling, and blogging after hours.
With a decade-plus of hands-on experience, Andy has worked across a broad spectrum of offensive security domains, including penetration testing, threat-led red teaming (both regulatory and bespoke), purple teaming, adversary emulation, and security capability development. He’s played a key role in delivering intelligence-led engagements aligned to frameworks and has helped organisations build resilience through realistic threat simulation and collaborative defence testing.
Beyond the day job, Andy has a strong track record in community involvement and education. He was the organiser of a local DEF CON group (DC44141), regularly presents at global security conferences, and runs training sessions focused on red teaming tradecraft, malwareless access, and adversary simulation. He’s also the author of numerous technical articles and walkthroughs published on his blog, often mixing clarity, humour, and depth to demystify complex topics in offensive security.
Andy enjoys photography and long drives outside of tech, finding creative and reflective space away from the screen. Whether you catch him speaking on stage or in the pub at a con, he’s always keen to talk shop, swap stories, or help others level up.
You can read more on his blog at https://blog.zsec.uk or his handle on the internet is @ZephrFish.
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