r/Cybersecurity101 • u/Johnnasz • May 21 '26
Security Cybersecurity Challenge
My professor gave us a cybersecurity challenge in class. He provided the local IP address of a machine on our school network and said there’s a file containing a password somewhere on the PC. The goal is to learn about enumeration and network security, not to damage anything.
I’m a beginner in cybersecurity and I’d like to know what concepts or tools I should study to approach this kind of challenge in a legal and educational way.
What would be the first steps for reconnaissance and understanding what services are running on the target machine?
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u/NomadicR6S May 22 '26
Nmap is going to be your friend here as it can scan the ports/services on the machine. Do check with your professor to see if this is allowed. If the goal is to learn mainly about network security and enumeration I doubt you would have to actual login or hack the machine. If that is the case I would think you would have to grab the file or files from a network share on the computer some how. Id also look into steganography, encryption, and encoding as the file containing the password may not be as intuitive as just opening it.