Cybersecurity Techniques and Operations

In this course I was introduced to tools and techniques used to secure and analyze large computer networks and systems. I learned about C programming in the first part of the course, which forms a foundation for many cybersecurity operations, such as malware analysis, understanding network protocol stack, etc. In the second part of the course, we explored and mapped networks using a variety of diagnostic software tools, learned advanced packet analysis, configure firewalls, wrote intrusion detection rules, performed forensic investigation, and practiced techniques for penetration testing.

Course Material

One of the assignments that I did within this course is a password cracking lab activity. In this assignment, we had to crack passwords on both Linux and Windows Systems. For the Linux System, we had to create two groups and assign users to those groups. Then, we created six passwords from easy to hard and launched a dictionary attack. For the Windows System, we had to create 3 users with different passwords and establish a reverse shell connection with admin privileges to target Windows 7 VM. We had to implement brute force and dictionary attacks to crack the passwords. 

Password-cracking-compressed

Sword v Shield is another lab activity that I did within this course. In this assignment, I was challenged to act as an attacker to identify the vulnerabilities in the LAN network and a defender to apply the proper countermeasures.

sword-v-shield-compressed