HW01: Cybersecurity, InfoSec, and Kali due Sat 31 Aug 23:59
Overview
This assignment has two distinct and unrelated parts described below.
Part 1 — 6 points
The field of information security has lots of terms which seem similar or interchangeable at times. We explore two such terms in this assignment. Begin by reading this article:https://www.bitsight.com/blog/cybersecurity-vs-information-security- In your own words, write a paragraph in which you explain your understanding of the difference between “Cybersecurity” and “Information Security”. Your paragraph should be written using a text editor (i.e., software the produces a human-readable .txt file). Attach the your text file to this assignment in Canvas. You should not make use of ChatGPT or any other LLM for any part of this assignment. You may, however, visit other sites and read additional articles on the differences between these related terms.
Part 2 — 10 points
For this part of the assignment you will install Kali Linux in a virtual environment. Your installation of Kali should meet the following requirements:- It should be installed on a laptop computer that you will be able to bring with to class.
- Although you can do a native install of Kali Linux (and wipe out the OS you are currently using) I'm assuming that you'll want to install it in a virtual environment under the native OS that already exists on the computer. If you do this you should use Oracle's VirtualBox as your environment. NOTE: VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS.
There are quite a few online sources that explain ways to install Kali Linux within VirtualBox. I have been through the install process multiple times and it seems to change each time. This is what has worked for me most recently, so feel free to branch out if these instructions don't work:
- Install VirtualBox by visiting https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads and selecting the link for your OS. Then run the downloaded install program.
- NOTE: When installing VirtualBox I was informed I was missing Python core and win32 api bindings needed. So, I cancelled the VirtualBox install and did a web search to get instructions on properly installing those dependencies.
- Download a Kali VirtualBox install file by visiting https://www.kali.org/downloads/ and find the download for pre-built virtual machines, 64-bit, virtual box version.
- The downloaded file is compressed in .7z format. If you don't have a program that can work with that format you'll need to download one and use it to unzip the file. Once unzipped you'll have a new directory that contains a .vdi file.
- Launch VirtualBox and click New. Enter the following values:
- Name: Kali
- Type: Linux
- Version: Debian 64-bit
- For memory size choose 4096MB (unless that value is in the red, in which case you should choose 2048MB). Click "Next".
- On the Hard Disk screen choose "Use an existing virtual hard disk file" and then click "Add". Then browse to the location of your extracted .vdi file and select it. Then click "Create".
- The virtual machine should appear in the list. Select it and click "Start".
- Log in to Kali with username kali and password kali.
- Open a terminal window and change password with this command: passwd
Take a photo of your laptop running Kali under virtualbox and upload the photo into Canvas.