Project · The site
About
EVIL is a cybersecurity training platform in Italian and English. It grew from a simple idea: you defend better what you truly understand. That is why we show how attacks work — in simulated environments and with public sources — always from the defender’s point of view.
1. Mission
To train people who can combine advanced technical skill with a strong sense of responsibility: programmers, security professionals, ethical hackers, security researchers and software engineers. Knowledge is a neutral tool — like fire, it can cook or destroy — and we teach how to use it to protect. The rules that keep all of this legal and proper are on the Ethics and law page.
2. The name
EVIL stands for Educational Vulnerability & Intelligence Lab: a teaching lab on vulnerabilities and intelligence. The name plays on the imagery of "evil" hacking precisely to flip it: here the same techniques are studied in order to defend.
3. How the site is built
The site is organised into three areas, plus the project pages:
- Learn — paths, web attack simulator, virtual lab, cryptography studio, incident response timeline, quiz centre and glossary.
- Analyse — advisories and vulnerabilities map, historic breaches, malware catalogue, taxonomy and persistence and evasion.
- Verify — tools such as URL check, domain reconnaissance, file analysis and defensive OSINT, to be used only on authorised systems.
Everything runs in the browser or on a teaching server: the simulators send nothing to real systems.
4. Where the data comes from
Transparency about data is part of the project. In short:
| Content | Nature |
|---|---|
| Advisories and vulnerabilities map | Real: CERT advisories and exploited vulnerabilities from public sources (CISA KEV, NIST NVD, CERT-AGID, CERT-EU). When a source does not give the country, we say so rather than inventing it. |
| Historic breaches | Real, documented: known cases rebuilt from public sources. Where a figure is not certain, the text stays general. |
| Malware catalogue and taxonomy | Educational: profiles of documented families, compiled from public vendor and CERT reports. |
| Virtual lab, simulator, timeline | Simulated: hand-written scenarios and output for practice, with no connection to real systems. |
| Quiz | Educational: questions and explanations written for the platform. |
The analysis tools (DNS, TLS, headers, OSINT) query public sources in real time about the target you enter, and only on domains you declare you are authorised for.
5. How to contribute
EVIL is an evolving project. Found a mistake in a profile, an inaccurate definition or a bug? Write to us from the Help page. If you find a vulnerability on the platform, follow responsible disclosure. The site’s code is public on GitHub.
See also: Ethics and law · Privacy and terms