CryptoKait’s List of Super Informal Learning Objectives

The following is my informal list of the topics I attempt to cover with my students before they begin the National Cyber League Games. These are the foundational skills they will need to navigate the competition without learning challenge by challenge. This is not a comprehensive list. This is only what I attempt to cover at a very introductory level before the first competition. The goal should be to create familiarity over mastery so the student can explore and develop their own mastery during the competition.

Building Virtual Machines

  1. Win7
  2. Kali-Linux

Open Source Intelligence

  1. Threat Intel
    1. Google It!!
  2. Email Header
    1. Easy Random Skill You Probably Already Have!)
  3. Metadata
    1. Viewing and Extracting Metadata
  4. Certificate Request
    1. How to Handle an Unknown File Extension

Cryptography

  1. Numeric-based Crypto
    1. Binary
    2. Octal
    3. Decimal
    4. Hexadecimal
    5. Alphanumeric
    6. Base-64
  2. Historical Cryptography
    1. Substitution
      Cesarean Shift (Easiest)
      Atbash (Reverse Alphabet)
      Morse Code (dots and dashes)
      Vigenere (recognized by secret word, phrase, key, etc.)
      Symbolic Substitution
    2. Transposition
      Columnar
      Transposition

Log Analysis

  1. History
    1. Having the right tool
    2. How to Handle an Unknown File Extension
  2. NGNIX
    1. Use What You Know! (Format data using Excel if that’s all you know!)

Password Cracking

  1. Having the right tool
    1. Cain
    2. John the Ripper
    3. Hascat
    4. Many Many Many options
  2. Using a Pre-made Wordlist
  3. Creating an Enumerated Wordlist
    1. Use What You Know! (Format data using Excel if that’s all you know!)
    2. Crunch Wordlist Generator
  4. Creating a Wordlist Using a Database

Network Traffic Analysis

  1. Having the right tool
    1. Introduction to Wireshark
    2. Introduction to Network Miner

Wireless Access Exploitation

  1. Having the right tool
    1. Introduction to Wireshark
    2. Introduction to Aircrack-ng

Scanning

  1. Having the right tool
    1. Introduction to Nmap
    2. Introduction to WPScan
    3. Introduction to Dirbuster

Linux Command Line

PowerShell