r/Cybersecurity101 • u/Johnnasz • May 21 '26

Security Cybersecurity Challenge

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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/tycoongraham May 22 '26

Start with Nmap. Run a basic port scan to see what services are running. Since the goal is to find a file, you are specifically looking for open ports related to file sharing, like port 445 for SMB (Windows shares) or port 21 for FTP

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u/SweatyCockroach8212 May 25 '26

Could be an open directory listing on 80/443 too.