CITC 2356 - Penetration Testing and Network Defense

Credit hours: 3

Course Description:
This course focuses on how hackers attack computers and networks, and how to protect Windows and Linux systems. Legal restrictions and ethical guidelines will be taught and enforced. Students will perform many hands-on labs, both attacking and defending, using port scans, footprinting, buffer overflow exploits, SQL injection, privilege escalation, Trojans, and backdoors. Students learn the legal, ethical, and technical aspects of using computer systems in unexpected ways. These skills are essential for penetration testers and other network security professionals.

Student Learning Outcomes:
Students will be able to:

Explain what an ethical hacker can and cannot do legally, and explain the credentials and roles of penetration testers.
Define the types of malicious software found in modern networks.
Explain the threats and countermeasures for physical security and social engineering.
Use a variety of tools and techniques to perform footprinting to learn about a company and its network.
Perform enumeration on various targets.
Perform simple scripting and coding tasks, specifically oriented towards the needs of network security professionals.
Identify vulnerabilities on various operating systems.
Describe how to take control of Web Servers, and how to protect them.
Locate and define weaknesses in various wireless networks, and protect them.
Explain how cryptography and hashing work, and perform attacks against them such as password cracking and man-in-the-middle attacks, using various tools.