Here's my thought process for web exploitation
- nmap --> What's open?
- Subdomain brute force
- Path brute force & /robots.txt
- Are there input boxes? Possible injection
- Does the input stay on the page? XSS
- Does it look like theres a database? SQL Injection
- Is there a ? in the url? Query String Injection
Here's my thought process for shell exploits (when given a ip and port)
- netcat it --> What did it say/What happens?
- What does it look like we have to do? Break it or exploit it
- Buffer overflow
- Try Empty Characters, NULL Character Input, ... etc