Day 3: Basic Networking Concepts

Welcome to Day 3 of our 10-day cybersecurity challenge! Today, we’ll cover some essential networking concepts that every aspiring ethical hacker should know.

IP Addresses An IP address is a unique identifier assigned to each device connected to a network. It's like a digital address that helps devices find each other. There are two types of IP addresses:

• IPv4: e.g., 192.168.1.1

• IPv6: e.g., 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334

DNS (Domain Name System) DNS translates domain names (like www.example.com) into IP addresses that computers use to identify each other on the network. It's essentially the phonebook of the internet.

Ports Ports are virtual endpoints for network communications, allowing multiple services to run on a single IP address. For example:

• Port 80: HTTP traffic

• Port 443: HTTPS traffic

Wireshark Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer that captures and interactively browses the traffic running on a computer network. It’s incredibly useful for analyzing packets and diagnosing network issues.

Installing and Using Wireshark

1. Download and install Wireshark from wireshark.org.

2. Open Wireshark and select your network interface to start capturing traffic.

3. You’ll see packets appearing in real-time. To filter the capture to show only HTTP traffic, type http in the filter bar.

4. Explore the details of each packet, including source and destination IP addresses, protocols used, and more.

Wireshark is a powerful tool for any ethical hacker. Spend some time exploring its features and capabilities.

That’s it for Day 3! We’ve covered the basics of networking, including IP addresses, DNS, ports, and an introduction to Wireshark. Tomorrow, we’ll dive into web application security. Stay tuned!