Thread by @InfoSystir

#infosecstaples = Time for a new hashtag to help out our #infosec students. Asked some remedial questions that anyone going into a tech field should know and was surprised they hadn't been taught these things in school.

I know my own college degree didn't prepare me at all for the work that I would be doing after I graduated, but I thought maybe it had gotten a little bit better at this point. I guess not. They seem to be failing the participants still.

One of the main reasons @synackpse & I wrote the Defensive Security Handbook was to put staple information all down into one place as well as we could, but it doesn't even come close to covering everything someone may need to know, that's what universities should be trying to do.

I still remember my first tech interview, and how embarrassed I was to not know a single one of the answers of the questions being asked. The one that sticks out in my mind still to this day was "Explain what happens when you sit down at a computer and go to a website"

I absolutely love this question. Mostly because it has such a depth of possibility. Are they going to start the answer with the physical interaction of the keyboard with the operating system? Will they describe how the browser works? How DNS works? Anything about Webservers?

During interviews I've seen anything from the basics, to extremely technical "where should I start and how long do you take" answers.

There are already so many articles and so much help on advice of how to get into our field, but I'm not sure how many of them have the technical additions to them. Maybe a hashtag would help, it could always snowball into a course or two as well.

I'm interested to see what staples that you think may help any type of technical student coming into the workforce. If you want to use #infosecstaples or maybe have a better idea. Let's ask the questions and see if they need help with the answers.

The better anyone new is prepared the faster they'll start to become accustomed and kicking ass for us day to day.

So here we go.... 1. Explain how DNS works. 2. What is an RFC1918 address? 3. What is a VPN and how does it work? 4. What does a 169.254.x.x address tell you? 5. What is the difference between hashing and encryption? #infosecstaples

What are these ports for?
21, 22, 23, 53, 80, 443, 8080, 3389, 6667-7000

What is the difference between FTPS and SFTP? #infosecstaples