Engineer an Ethical Hacking Lab with Podman
Students engaged in network reconnaissance.Copyright North Valleys High School, Washoe Schools 2025
Students become red team ethical hackers by building a safe hacking lab and learning tools used to test real networks. Students are introduced to ethical hacking, containers, network engineering, wordlist generation, and brute-force password cracking. Using Podman, students create and network their hacker system (Kali Linux) and target system (Metasploitable2 or “Meta2”). With Netcat, they scan the target’s IPs, ports, and services, then design efficient username and password lists with Maskprocessor. Finally, students test vulnerabilities by attempting controlled brute-force attacks on the target and its DVWA web server using Medusa and their custom wordlists. The activity builds practical lab skills and broadens understanding of computer science topics such as cryptography, web apps, networking, containers, and AI/LLMs.
Red team ethical hackers use a shorter version of the engineering design process to test the security of computer systems. They start by gathering information, then they try to break into the system through penetration testing, and finally they report what they find. This is a lot like what engineers do when they check and test their designs to make sure they work safely. In fact, ethical hacking is considered the "verification and validation" part of network and security engineering, which means hackers make sure systems do what they are supposed to and find weak spots before real attackers do. Ethical hacking is another way engineers solve problems and protect important technology.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Understand how to detect system network vulnerabilities.
- Develop customized wordlists to crack both usernames and passwords.
- Explain the connection between usernames, passwords, and hash protocols (md5, sha1, sha256).
- Ethically hack into a system and web server with brute force and crack both usernames and passwords.
- Discuss solutions to secure systems from threat actors.
- Use and contrast AI/LLM system outputs for bash scripting and coding.