Ninjutsu - Cybersecurity (FREE version)
Section outline
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Lesson Overview: In this lesson, students learn what vulnerability scanning is and why it’s critical to find weaknesses before attackers (or AI-driven threats) do. We break down how scanners work, types of scans, tools used, and how to interpret results. The goal is to empower learners to proactively discover and fix security gaps – a skill highly valued in cybersecurity jobs.
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Lesson Overview: This lesson teaches how to prioritize fixing vulnerabilities by understanding the difference between a vulnerability’s technical severity and the real-world risk it poses. Students learn about severity scoring systems (like CVSS), and how factors like exploitability, asset value, and threat context influence what to fix first. The tone is motivational: mastering prioritization skills makes you the strategist who allocates security efforts smartly – a big win in the job arena where resources are limited and attacks are automated.
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Lesson Overview: This lesson dives into common authentication weaknesses – the “front door” failures that let attackers in. Topics include weak passwords and credential attacks, flaws in token-based authentication (like session hijacking), and pitfalls of misplaced trust (like default credentials or lack of verification). The style is urgent and motivational: securing authentication is often the first battle in cybersecurity – if you win here, you keep bad guys (and malicious AI bots) out of your accounts and systems. We emphasize simple language: every technical term like “token” or “2FA” is explained for teens and parents.
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Lesson Overview: This lesson educates students on what happens after an attacker breaches a system – how they move laterally through the network and establish persistence to maintain access. The focus is on recognizing these behaviors so that defenders (even young aspiring defenders!) know what to look for and fix first when cleaning up after or preparing for an incident. The tone stresses that in the age of fast-moving malware and AI-driven attacks, understanding post-compromise tactics is key to outsmarting them. We frame it from the defender perspective: find and fix the weak points that allow movement and persistence, and thereby contain the damage.
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Lesson Objective: Understand various types of malware and their indicators of compromise. Students learn to identify viruses, worms, Trojans, rootkits, spyware/adware, and ransomware, and recognize common signs of infection. This knowledge builds a foundation to defeat malicious software – including those enhanced by AI – by knowing the enemy’s “weapons.”
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Lesson Objective: Introduce students to the fundamentals of malware analysis – how to examine malware safely to understand its behavior. The focus is on static analysis (inspecting malware without running it) versus dynamic analysis (running malware in a controlled environment to observe it). Students learn the basic clues each method can reveal and the importance of safe lab practices. This lesson empowers them to “think like malware analysts,” a skill that sets them apart from automated defenses. (Even in an AI-driven world, human analysts who can dissect new malware are invaluable.)
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Lesson Objective: Teach students how to be aware of network traffic patterns and identify what “doesn’t fit.” They will learn the difference between normal, benign network behavior and suspicious or malicious traffic. Key concepts include establishing a baseline of normal activity, recognizing signs of scans, breaches, or attacks in network traffic, and an intro to tools and techniques (like sniffers or basic IDS concepts) for monitoring. With AI increasingly used in both cyber defense and attack, a human who can spot subtle anomalies remains crucial – this lesson builds that intuition.
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Lesson Objective: Introduce students to the concept of network interception attacks, notably spoofing techniques and Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks. They will learn how attackers can eavesdrop or tamper with communications (e.g., via ARP spoofing, DNS spoofing, rogue Wi-Fi) and the associated risks. Equally important, they will learn defenses to prevent or mitigate MITM attacks (encryption, verification, network safeguards). This lesson continues the “ninja” theme: teaching how to both detect and dodge stealthy interception moves in the cyber battlefield.
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Lesson Overview: This lesson tackles the most prevalent web application vulnerabilities (based on OWASP Top 10) and how to fix them. Students will learn to identify weaknesses like broken access controls, injections, and misconfigurations, and apply remedies to harden web apps.
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Lesson Overview: This lesson focuses on defensive patterns to handle user input safely across the board. Building on injection attacks from Lesson 25, students will learn concrete coding practices and design patterns (like whitelisting, validation, encoding, least privilege) that prevent SQL injection, XSS, command injection, and similar input-based attacks.
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Lesson Overview: In this lesson, students learn that APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are the new “front door” to many applications (think mobile app backends, single-page app backends, etc.), and thus securing them is critical. We cover how to secure RESTful and other web APIs through strong authentication, authorization, input validation, rate limiting, and other modern API security practices, referencing common API vulnerabilities (like those in OWASP API Top 10).
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Lesson Overview: This lesson delves into securing wireless networks and mobile devices, the “pocket battlefields.” We address Wi-Fi security (WEP/WPA weaknesses, rogue APs, etc.) and mobile platform security (device encryption, app security). The goal is to teach how to harden these ubiquitous but vulnerable technologies.
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