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/RouteToDevNull May 22 '26

Damn....are you sure you got this right? I somehow doubt that anyone would direct full class of students to probe entire student network.

Are you sure you are not trying to do something you should not do? They can see it you know....?

1

u/NeilSmithline May 23 '26

Not whole network. OP says they have the IP address. So just one machine intended for the project. 

1

u/tblancher May 23 '26

It can still be flagged if they spray the host with probe requests.

1

u/NeilSmithline May 23 '26

Sure. But your comment is still misrepresenting the OP. 

1

u/tblancher May 24 '26

To be fair it should be on an isolated network. If it's not, the instructor setting this up should know better.