Every forensic tool I'd worked through up to this point operated on one file at a time: hash a file, check a hash, open a file to verify its format. This lab moved to a different scale entirely, takin
An attacker trying to sneak a file past a network administrator doesn't need sophisticated malware if a simpler trick works just as well: rename the file, change its extension, and let the system's ow
The previous lab in this module was about looking a hash up against the outside world, checking a suspicious file against VirusTotal's malware database. This one flipped the direction entirely: compar
Every cryptography lab I'd worked through before this one treated hashing as an integrity check: has this file changed since I last looked at it? This lab reframed the same tool for a different discip
Most of the labs I'd worked through up to this point focused on one specific control at a time: a firewall rule, an IAM policy, a single detection. This lab was different. It was a capstone exercise b
Most people treat the Recycle Bin, and emptying it, as the final word on a deleted file. This lab walked through why that assumption is wrong, and why both sides of that fact matter for a network defe
There's a meaningful difference between encrypting a file and encrypting a volume, and it's not just a matter of scale. A single encrypted file still reveals its own existence, its name, its size, rou
Hashing and certificates both get filed under "cryptography," but they're answering two genuinely different questions. A hash answers: has this file changed since I last checked? A certificate, even a
A wireless router arrives from the factory configured to work, not to be secure. Those are different goals, and the gap between them is exactly what this lab walked through: taking a consumer-grade TP
