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How to Become a White Hat


lmhicks101

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Hello

 

I'm currently going to school to become a network technician and I'm studying for my CCENT and CCNA. However I would truly love to become a white hat and help find and prevent breaches. Where should I start?

 

 

 

Thank You

 

lmhicks101

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Too many variables to give it a "weight".

 

It will depend on your age, your level of schooling, your technical expertise, etc.

 

One might go into it while in High School and another may need to have some college level courses under their belt.

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A good place to start would be to study the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP) (aka; TCP/IP) and the Networking File System (NFS).  Understand what a Connection Full protocol is as compared to a connectionless protocol (like; FTP vs. SNMP).
 
Learn and understand the OSI Model and how communication protocols in general "work".

 

To "find and prevent breaches" you must understand both normal and abnormal traffic patterns and to do that you must be well acquainted with the above subject matter.  Getting training for Cisco is a part of it as they have a large niche but you also have to understand the concepts holistically and not just based upon a particular vendor's POV.

 

Does that help ?

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That actually helps allot. Currently I'm actually studying the OSI model, layer 2 and 3 to be more precise, and I understand IP is for LAN and TCP is for end to end over the internet, but my problem is mainly with subnet. Do you have any advise with that? I grasp the other layer perfectly fine though.

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OK.  While not seen as much Today, I suggest looking the Internetwork Packet Exchange/Sequenced Packet Exchange (IPX/SPX) and the one that had potential for security but could not gain momentum due to the prevalence of TCP/IP -  1GOSIP .

as well as;  NetBIOS , LAN Manager and Server Message Blocks (SMB).

 

By studying IPX/SPX you can contrast and compare that to TCP/IP.

By studying GOSIP you can learn how TCP/IP became the defacto standard with all its drawbacks and inherent vulnerabilities.

By studying NetBIOS, LAN Manager and SMB you will have a greater understanding how networking is done Today and its roots in earlier networking models such as OS/2.

 

This will give you greater insight 'cause you have to know where you have been to look forward and move ahead and mitigate the threats as they come to light.

 

----

1.  Why reinvent the wheel when its already on the cart ?  GOSIP had potential and could have mitigated much of success of malicious actors, hackers, hacktivists and data stealers. 

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