Scanning and enumeration in Cybersecurity - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Understanding Scanning and Enumeration in Cybersecurity

📖 Scenario: You are a cybersecurity analyst tasked with identifying active devices and services on a small company network. This helps protect the network by knowing what is connected and what might be vulnerable.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple step-by-step understanding of scanning and enumeration by creating a list of devices, setting a scanning range, identifying active devices, and listing their open services.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of devices with their IP addresses and status

Set a scanning range variable to define which IPs to check

Use a loop to find active devices within the scanning range

List open services for each active device

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Network administrators use scanning and enumeration to discover devices and services on their networks to maintain security and manage resources.

💼 Career

Understanding scanning and enumeration is essential for cybersecurity roles such as penetration testers, network security analysts, and system administrators.

1

Create the initial list of devices

Create a list called devices containing dictionaries for these devices exactly: {'ip': '192.168.1.2', 'status': 'inactive'}, {'ip': '192.168.1.3', 'status': 'active'}, and {'ip': '192.168.1.4', 'status': 'inactive'}.

Cybersecurity

# Create the list of devices with IP and status
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list with dictionaries. Each dictionary should have keys 'ip' and 'status' with the exact values given.

2

Set the scanning IP range

Create a variable called scan_range and set it to a list containing these IP addresses exactly: '192.168.1.2', '192.168.1.3', '192.168.1.4'.

Cybersecurity

devices = [
    {'ip': '192.168.1.2', 'status': 'inactive'},
    {'ip': '192.168.1.3', 'status': 'active'},
    {'ip': '192.168.1.4', 'status': 'inactive'}
]
# Create the scan_range list with the given IPs
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list with the exact IP addresses as strings.

3

Identify active devices in the scan range

Create a list called active_devices that contains the IP addresses from devices where the status is 'active' and the ip is in scan_range. Use a for loop with variables device to check each device.

Cybersecurity

devices = [
    {'ip': '192.168.1.2', 'status': 'inactive'},
    {'ip': '192.168.1.3', 'status': 'active'},
    {'ip': '192.168.1.4', 'status': 'inactive'}
]

scan_range = ['192.168.1.2', '192.168.1.3', '192.168.1.4']

# Create active_devices list with IPs of active devices in scan_range
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a for loop to check each device's status and IP, then add the IP to active_devices if conditions match.

4

List open services for each active device

Create a dictionary called services where keys are IP addresses from active_devices and values are lists of open services. Add these exact entries: '192.168.1.3': ['HTTP', 'SSH'].

Cybersecurity

devices = [
    {'ip': '192.168.1.2', 'status': 'inactive'},
    {'ip': '192.168.1.3', 'status': 'active'},
    {'ip': '192.168.1.4', 'status': 'inactive'}
]

scan_range = ['192.168.1.2', '192.168.1.3', '192.168.1.4']

active_devices = []
for device in devices:
    if device['status'] == 'active' and device['ip'] in scan_range:
        active_devices.append(device['ip'])

# Create services dictionary with open services for active devices
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Create a dictionary with the IP as key and a list of services as value exactly as shown.