// networking basics — start here
Cybersecurity Foundations — Start Here
This is a complete, ground-up course in the shared base of cybersecurity — the concepts, networks, protocols, cryptography, operating systems, scripting, and frameworks that both offensive (red team) and defensive (blue team) work stand on. Nobody starts as a specialist. Everyone starts here.
By the end you'll have the vocabulary, the network literacy, the crypto and OS fundamentals, and the automation skills that make the eventual red-or-blue decision a matter of taste rather than capability — because you'll already be able to do the groundwork either one requires.
The original design document is Cybersecurity Foundations: Everything Before the Red/Blue Split. The course itself is the modules below. This is the companion to the Linux Foundations curriculum and it assumes you've done it — where Linux comes up, we build on it rather than repeating it.
The rules (same discipline as the Linux course)
- Go in order. These modules are a dependency graph flattened into a line. The networking block (Modules 2–5) builds on itself, and almost everything after leans on networking. Concepts introduced early — the CIA triad, encapsulation, hashing — get reused constantly and are not re-explained.
- Build the lab in Module 1 before anything hands-on. It is your legal, safe, breakable playground. Every later exercise assumes you have it.
- Do every lab. You cannot learn to read a packet capture by reading about packet captures. You learn it by opening Wireshark and staring at a handshake until it clicks. The lab is half the lesson.
- Pass the Mastery Check before moving on. Every module ends with questions you must answer out loud, without notes, and tasks you must perform cold. If you can't, re-read and redo the lab. This is the mechanism that makes the course work — do not skip it.
- Only ever touch systems you own or have explicit written permission to test. Module 0 covers this in full. The techniques here are neutral; the legality is entirely about authorization. Practice on your own lab and sanctioned targets only.
- Watch for the → Red/Blue notes. Each one shows how a single foundation feeds both tracks — how an attacker uses it and how a defender uses the same knowledge. That is the whole point of learning it before the split.
The chain
| # | Module | What you'll be able to do afterward |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Module 0 — Orientation: The Shared Language of Security | Speak the precise vocabulary — CIA, threat vs. vulnerability vs. exploit vs. risk — and state the ethics/law rule cold |
| 1 | Module 1 — Build Your Lab (Virtualization & Safe Practice) | Stand up an isolated, snapshot-able virtual lab that can't leak |
| 2 | Module 2 — Networking I: The Models, Addressing, and the Stack | Trace data down and up the stack, reason about IP addressing and subnets |
| 3 | Module 3 — Networking II: Transport, Ports, and the Three-Way Handshake | Draw the three-way handshake and read TCP/UDP state |
| 4 | Module 4 — Networking III: The Protocols You'll Live In (and DNS in Depth) | Know what talks on which port, and understand DNS in depth |
| 5 | Module 5 — Reading Traffic: tcpdump & Wireshark | See every earlier concept in a live packet capture |
| 6 | Module 6 — How the Web Works (Because Everything Is Web Now) | Read an HTTP request/response fluently and explain sessions, cookies, TLS |
| 7 | Module 7 — Cryptography Fundamentals | Never again confuse encoding, hashing, and encryption |
| 8 | Module 8 — Operating Systems Under a Security Lens: Linux & Windows | Navigate both Linux and Windows security models, and explain Active Directory |
| 9 | Module 9 — Identity, Authentication & Access | Explain how credentials work and why they're the main battleground |
| 10 | Module 10 — Scripting & Automation: Bash, Python, and Regex | Write Bash glue, Python tooling, and regex to reshape any output |
| 11 | Module 11 — Logging, Telemetry & Evidence | Say where logs live and pull meaningful events out of them |
| 12 | Module 12 — Threats, Vulnerabilities & the Frameworks That Organize Them | Speak CVE/CVSS/ATT&CK and map an attack to its lifecycle |
| ★ | Capstone — You're Ready to Choose a Track | Prove the whole foundation, then step into red or blue |
Pace
A realistic pace is one module per few evenings. The networking block (2–5) and the scripting module (10) are the heaviest and deserve the most time — they're the two things you'll use every single day, in either track. Speed is not the goal. Never moving forward past something you half-understand is the goal.
Begin: Module 0 — Orientation: The Shared Language of Security