This tutorial provides a hands-on, ethical deep dive into the common vulnerabilities and exploitation techniques targeting the deprecated Windows 7 operating system. Designed for aspiring Junior Security Engineers and penetration testers, you will learn how to safely and legally use industry-standard tools like Metasploit to gain remote access. Crucially, the tutorial balances offense with defense, guiding you through the steps necessary to identify, patch and monitor the systems to prevent these exact attacks. Key Learning Outcomes Vulnerability Identification: Discover misconfigurations and known vulnerabilities (e.g., EternalBlue or specific service flaws) common to end-of-life Windows 7 environments. Exploitation: Learn the precise steps for using Metasploit Framework to establish a remote shell (Meterpreter) on a target Windows 7 virtual machine. Post-Exploitation: Understand privilege escalation, hash dumping, and persistence techniques once access is achieved. Defensive Countermeasures: Implement IDS/IPS rules (e.g., Snort/Suricata) and Splunk/Wazuh SIEM alerts to detect and block these attack vectors in a network environment. Disclaimer: This tutorial is for educational purposes only. All actions must be conducted in a controlled, isolated lab environment (e.g., virtual machines) where you have explicit permission to test and experiment. Using these techniques against unauthorized targets is illegal.