Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League – Back to the Gym

Objective: 

Students will continue to train in the NCL Gym to enhance their understanding of Cybersecurity principles and to assist in preparing for next year’s competition.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Cyber Security
  • National Cyber League
  • NCL Spring Season
  • Team Game
  • NCL Gym Training

Assignment:

  1. This week, we will continue our training in the Gym to learn more about cybersecurity tools and techniques, and to prepare returning Net/Op students for competition in the NCL 2019 Spring Season.
  2. It is expected that everyone will complete as many of the Gym exercises as they can by May 16th. This will allow for us to prepare for the end-of-course final exam over the week of May 13th. The current high score in the gym has been capped at 5000 points, so your final assignment grade will be graded on a curve down from this point total. In essence, you will receive a grade based on how close your score is to 5000, so you should continue working in the Gym for the next two weeks, regardless of how much (or how little) you have already completed.
  3. The final exam will be held on May 17th during the regular class period. It is a 100 question multiple choice quiz covering all six of the chapters studied during the first half of the course, plus some of the cybersecurity tools we worked with in the second half of the course. We will review this material the week of the 13th.

Support Team:

For those who are not participating in the NCL, the daily challenge has been posted on my Google Classroom page. This week’s challenges are difficult Steganography challenges, so make sure you have downloaded the Digital Invisible Ink Toolkit, and visit the page to complete the daily challenge and receive your participation points for the class!

Assigned: May 6th, 2019
Teacher Pacing Due Date: May 8th, 2019

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Final Game: The Team Game

Objective: 

Students will form a team and use their collective knowledge and training to compete in the NCL Team Game.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Cyber Security
  • National Cyber League
  • NCL Spring Season
  • Team Game

Assignment:

The Final Game: Team Game Play

Real-world cybersecurity work is often done in teams. The NCL Team Game provides a safe and challenging environment for players from the Individual Game to apply their knowledge and skills in a team setting. The team game requires players to work together to solve real problems, with real deadlines, under time (and in some cases) technical and resource constraints. No flag-sharing with other teams allowed.

All registered student players are eligible to play in the Team Game; Preseason participation is not required. If all members of the team did not participate in the Individual Game, then your team will be placed into the Pewter Bracket for the Team Game.

You will need to arrange and setup your own teams. As a coach, I have no involvement or ability to set up or configure teams. Setup must be completed by April 25 at 8:59 PM Local Time or you will not be able to participate.

1. Students who are creating a team can do so here: https://cyberskyline.com/events/ncl/register/team. After they create the team, they will be given a link to give to players (up to 7) they want on their team.

2. Students who are joining a team will need to obtain the team joining link from the person who created the team. Once they visit the link and confirm, they will be part of the team. 

3. Students may form teams of up to 7 players. While students may form their own team and play the game solo, this is highly discouraged, as it will limit your ability to earn points, and will likely result in a poor grade for this final assessment project. Please complete your team setup by April 25th at 8:59 p.m. local time.

The Team Game is a mandatory weekend game. The Team Game starts at 10:00 a.m. local time on Friday, April 26th and ends at 6:00 p.m. local time on Sunday, April 28th.

  1. If you do not finish the competition during class time, please continue to advance through the challenges over the weekend. Do not forget that you can log into the NCL Stadium from any device with an Internet connection, but you may need tools available on a Windows or Linux workstation to solve some of the challenges.
  2. I will be on campus from 10:00am to 3:00pm on Saturday, April 27th, for those who wish to come in and work on the NCL challenges using the full resources of the NetOp computer lab.
  3. It is recommended that you continue with the competition over the weekend and get as far as you can to achieve the best results.

Please mark your calendars, and plan and prepare accordingly as this Team Game will represent the final Assessment grade before the Final Exam for this final term.

Support Team:

For those who are not competing in the NCL challenges, a daily challenge will be posted on my Google Classroom page. These will usually come in the form of short quizzes or short answer response posts. Visit the page and complete the daily challenge to receive your participation points for the class!

Assigned: April 22nd, 2019
Teacher Pacing Due Date: April 26th, 2019

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Game 2: The Regular Season Game

Objective: 

Students will use their accumulated knowledge and training to compete in the NCL Regular Season Game.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Cyber Security
  • National Cyber League
  • NCL Spring Season
  • Regular Season Game

Assignment:

The Second Game: Regular Season Play
The Regular Season Game is a mandatory weekend game. By now, you should have your Bracketing Reports, and know what bracket you are competing in. You must participate in the Regular Season Game in order to receive an NCL Scouting Report. The Regular Season gameplay starts at 10:00 a.m. local time on Friday, April 12th and ends at 6:00 p.m. local time on Sunday, April 14th.

  1. If you do not finish the competition during class time, please continue to advance through the challenges over the weekend. Do not forget that you can log into the NCL Stadium from any device with an Internet connection, but you may need tools available on a Windows or Linux workstation to solve some of the challenges.
  2. I will be on campus from 12:00pm to 3:00pm on Saturday, April 13th, for those who wish to come in and work on the NCL challenges using the full resources of the NetOp computer lab.
  3. It is recommended that you continue with the competition over the weekend and get as far as you can to achieve the best result in your final Scouting Report.

Please mark your calendars, and plan and prepare accordingly as the Individual Game will represent a significant portion of your grade for this final term.

Support Team:

For those who are not competing in the NCL challenges, a daily challenge will be posted on my Google Classroom page. These will usually come in the form of short quizzes or short answer response posts. Visit the page and complete the daily challenge to receive your participation points for the class!

Assigned: April 8th, 2019
Teacher Pacing Due Date: April 12th, 2019

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Resources: Steganography Resources

Steganography is a method of hiding data within an ordinary-looking image or video in order to avoid detection. Files and messages can be embedded into other files in various ways, and then extracted by its recipient. Steganography can be combined with encryption as an extra step for hiding or protecting data.

Links:

What is Steganography?– An article introducing Steganography from Wired magazine.

Digital Invisible Ink Toolkit – A simple Java-based steganography tool that can hide a message inside a 24-bit color image so that knowing how it was embedded, or performing statistical analysis, does not make it any easier to find the concealed information.

Imagemagick – A powerful image creation software that can be used to convert images to and from a variety of formats, including text-based pixel plots. Pre-built into Kali Linux.

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Resources: Cryptography Links

Links:

Cryptii – A very cool and very fast “modular” decryption tool that lets you run a string of text through several encryption/decryption methods of your choice.

The Black Chamber – A great collection of interactive tools that explain and allow you to decrypt a variety of common (and some uncommon) encoding schemes.

Decode Ingress – A list of tools that can help you with decoding  passcodes, originally provided for use with the AR game Ingress. Tools for text manipulating, basic conversions like text to ASCII, HEX to Base64. Tools to decipher Morse code.  Good Image exif info grabbers, and image editing tools for Steganography puzzles (messages hidden in digital images). A range of great info and tools about various ciphers, and their implementations.

Tools for Noobs: Online Decryption Tool – Decrypts a string using various algorithms (e.g. Blowfish, DES, TripleDES, Enigma).

Rumkin Deciphering Tools – This is a page dedicated to simple text manipulation tools, which all can be replicated with just paper and pencil. An amazing resource for deciphering methods, including many that we will definitely encounter in NCL puzzles (Atbash, Railfence and Vigenere).

MD5hashing.net Encryption and Decryption – At md5hashing.net you can hash (encrypt) any string into 66 different hash types. As you probably know – decryption of any hash is impossible, but they offer reverse decryption via our database (~1000M records, and counting).

Splitbrain.org Encoding/Decoding Tools – This tool helps you to quickly run some text through various different encoding/decoding functions available in PHP. Great for a lot of different decoding possibilities rapidly

CodeBeautify.org Encryption/Decryption Tool – A nice, clean tool for decrypting codes that you know the key for, or encrypting codes with your own original key.

SQLite Viewer for Chrome – Chrome plugin for viewing SQLite databases in your browser. Allows opening and editing of SQLite databases without requiring admin access to install.

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Week 2: The Preseason Game

Objective: 

Students will use their accumulated knowledge and training to compete in the NCL Preseason Game.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Cyber Security
  • National Cyber League
  • NCL Spring Season
  • Preseason

Assignment:

The First Game: Preseason Play
The Preseason is a week-long mandatory game. You must participate in the Preseason in order to receive an NCL Scouting Report. The Preseason gameplay starts at 1:00 p.m. ET on Monday, April 1st and ends at 9:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, April 8th.

There are lots of preparatory materials available. Also, be sure to read about the Bracketing system, which the Preseason game determines, as well as the Ethical Behavior/Rules of Conduct.

  1. If you complete the Preseason game, continue your training in the Gym to prepare for the Regular Season competition on Friday, April 12th.
  2. Remember that Thursday, April 4th and Friday, April 5th are a split schedule due to AIMS Science testing. You will not be here on Thursday, but you will have two solid hours to complete NCL challenges on Friday, so please use your time wisely.
  3. If you do not finish the competition during class time, please continue to advance through the challenges over the weekend. Do not forget that you can log into the NCL Stadium from any device with an Internet connection, but you may need tools available on a Windows or Linux workstation to solve some of the challenges. It is recommended that you continue with the competition over the weekend and get as far as you can to achieve the best result in your final Scouting Report.

The Big Game: Regular Season Individual Game
The Regular Season Individual Game is a three-day mandatory game. You must participate in the Regular Season in order to receive an NCL Scouting Report. The Regular Season Game starts at 10:00 am MST on Friday, April 12th and ends at 6:00 p.m. MST on Sunday, April 14th.

Please mark your calendars, and plan and prepare accordingly as the Preseason and Individual Game will form the bulk of your grade for this final term.

Support Team:

For those who are not competing in the NCL challenges, a daily challenge will be posted on my Google Classroom page. These will usually come in the form of short quizzes or short answer response posts. Visit the page and complete the daily challenge to receive your participation points for the class!

Assigned: April 1st, 2019
Teacher Pacing Due Date: April 8th, 2019

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Resources: Hacksplaining

Objective: 

Students will begin preparing for competition in the National Cyber League by familiarizing themselves with known vulnerabilities faced by software developers.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Cyber Security
  • NIST
  • National Vulnerability Database
  • CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) Database

Assignment:

  1. Visit the Hacksplaining website and create a login using your haydenmagnet.org email account.
  2. Hacksplaining offers hands-on interactive simulations of hacks that exploit known vulnerabilities in many widely used applications and programming languages.
  3. Each module contains three parts: Exercise, Prevention and Quiz. Complete the exercise to see how the hack is performed. Review the prevention information to learn more about the exploited vulnerability and effective methods of protection. Complete the quiz to confirm your understanding and complete the module.
  4. Take a screenshot of your passing quiz grade for each module to provide verification that you have completed the module. Save all these screenshots in a folder, as you will need to submit them in a Google Doc to receive credit for this project.
  5. There are twenty-five modules in total. You have this week and next week to complete all the modules.
  6. Submit a Google Doc containing screenshots of your passing grades for all 25 module quizzes to today’s Google Classroom assignment post by end of day on Friday, March 29th.

Assigned: March 19th, 2019
Teacher Pacing Due Date: March 29th, 2019

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Week 1: Gym Training

Objective: 

Students will begin preparing for competition in the National Cyber League by familiarizing themselves with the competition rules and procedures through training in the NCL Gym.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Cyber Security
  • National Cyber League
  • NCL Spring Season
  • Preseason
  • Regular Season
  • Postseason

Assignment:

  1. The NCL Gym will be open next week. The NCL Gym provides practice challenges to help prepare players for Preseason, Regular Season and Postseason. We will begin practicing in the NCL Gym when our accounts become available.
  2. While practicing in the NCL Gym, access the solutions guide to receive step-by-step instructions to help you understand the more difficult challenges.
  3. Log into the Gym
  4. Read the FAQ – you need to know the NCL lingo
  5. Mark your calendars with the following important NCL Preseason and Regular season dates:
    1. 3/28 – 5/24: Gym Training
    2. 4/1 – 4/8: Mandatory Preseason Game
    3. 4/12 – 4/14: Regular Season Individual Game
    4. 4/26 – 4/28: Postseason Team Game

The First Game: Preseason Play
The Preseason is a week-long mandatory game. You must participate in the Preseason in order to receive an NCL Scouting Report. The Preseason gameplay starts at 1:00 p.m. ET on April 1st and ends at 9:00 p.m. ET on April 8th.

There are lots of preparatory materials available. Also, be sure to read about the Bracketing system, which the Preseason game determines, as well as the Ethical Behavior/Rules of Conduct.

Assigned: March 18th, 2019
Teacher Pacing Due Date: March 19th, 2019

Networking and Operating Systems

Cyber Security Boot Camp – Wireshark Packet Analysis Activity

Objective: 

Students will continue preparing for proficiency in cyber security with an introduction to the basics of packet analysis in the Wireshark application.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Kali Linux
  • Wireshark
  • Packet Analysis
  • Wireshark Configuration

Assignment:

  1. Capture packets on your eth0 interface for a period of five minutes. Visit https://netop.mistermarmolejo.com to get some http traffic going during the packet capture.
  2. Save the packet capture as a .pcapng file with today’s date, and upload it to today’s assignment post on Google Classroom to complete the activity by end of day tomorrow.
  3. If you are not sure how to begin a packet capture on the eth0 interface, review Professor Messer’s Wireless Packet Analysis video and read Lifewire.com’s How to Use Wireshark: A Complete Tutorial.
  4. If your Kali Linux Virtualbox installation is still not working, see Mister Marmolejo for assistance.

Assigned: March 7th, 2019
Teacher Pacing Due Date: March 8th, 2019

Networking and Operating Systems

Cyber Security Boot Camp – Wireshark Packet Analysis 2

Objective: 

Students will continue preparing for proficiency in cyber security with an introduction to the basics of packet analysis in the Wireshark application.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Kali Linux
  • Wireshark
  • Packet Analysis
  • Wireshark Configuration

Assignment:

  1. Continue working with Wireshark. This powerful packet collection and analysis tool is free to download and is pre-installed in the Kali Linux distribution.
  2. Watch Professor Messer’s Using Protocol Analyzers video to get a more in-depth introduction to the features of Wireshark.
  3. Review the good Professor’s Wireless Packet Analysis video and read Lifewire.com’s How to Use Wireshark: A Complete Tutorial to get a better idea of how the Wireshark interface works, and a few tips on how you can configure the Wireshark GUI to meet your specific needs and preferences.
  4. Note: Our Virtualbox installs of Kali use emulated network interfaces, which means that our wireless interface will not work like the one Professor Messer demonstrates in his video.
  5. Wireshark will, however, be able to analyze the packets being sent over the emulated hard-line network interface. Try running a packet capture on your en0 network interface and see what you can see! Run a packet capture, then visit a few websites, then filter the port 80 traffic to get an idea of what kind of information can be gathered by an analysis of the packets. We will discuss the results tomorrow.

Assigned: March 6th, 2019
Teacher Pacing Due Date: March 7th, 2019

It's dangerous to go alone!