Hi, 👋🏼! I'm Nicholas Adamou.

Online education has developed and grown tremendously over the past three decades due to the advancement of technology. Higher internet speeds, better storage technology, and improvements to web languages have brought forth new innovations including cloud computing, Google web applications (e.g. Google Drive, Google Photos, etc), and better online courses including lynda and Coursera. In this paper, I will focus on the following key areas as they relate to online courseware: (i) History, (ii) Advancement of Technology and (iii) Applications of New Innovations to demonstrate how new technology developments within these areas have positively impacted online courses.

There are different standards for security of networks such as: Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and Wi-Fi Protected Access version 2 (WPA2). Each protocol has their own unique way of authenticating a user into a network. Determining which protocol is the best choice for a particular organization can be challenging. Hartwick College has a total student body of approximately 1,550 students with 500 or so faculty members and staff, so keeping its user-base secure is a keen issue that its system and network administrators have to consider. The IT department at Hartwick College has utilized all of this knowledge to develop and provide a secure network for its student body and faculty.

Since the boom of the internet, the race to become a completely digital society has begun. This has led to the emergence of new services and industries. Because of the internet, many internet-based services and applications have sprung up. Many companies have made the switch to cloud computing. Most noteworthy and the first to the market was Netflix. Netflix is known for their internet-based streaming service used for watching television on any mobile device, such as tablets, laptops, and smartphones. Because of Netflix’s success in the streaming business other competitive companies have emerged, such as Hulu, Amazon TV, HBO and YouTube. Essentially, any device that can connect to the internet, can use Netflix’s service or other competing services. According to Nielsen data, over the last 10 years, the internet has grown to become a fundamental part of our society. 274.2 million Americans were hooked up to the Internet in 2011 (more than double the number with access in 2000) and spent 81 billion minutes on social networks and blogs (Nielsen). There are 165.9 million people who watch video on the computer. As stated in Nielsen, 28% of users choose to watch online video on a smartphone rather than watching online video on other handheld devices, which is 11%. (Nielsen). The expansion into streaming services has been linked to the emergence of newer technology that provided for a higher level of bandwidth and thus a better user experience. In that regard, the advanced innovation and increased subscription rates provided for better returns in terms of economics for those companies in the streaming media business such as Netflix. From a broader perspective, the evolution of digitization such as Netflix has had direct impact on macroeconomics, including employment,emergence of new innovative businesses, and traditional media businesses within the economy.

There are different standards for the security of networks such as Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), and Wi-Fi Protected Access version 2 (WPA2). Each protocol has its own unique way of authenticating a user into a network. Each, however, is wrought with vulnerabilities that attackers, such as network penetration testers can exploit to gain access to a targeted network. Cornell College has a total student body of approximately 1000 students with 200 or so staff and faculty members, so so keeping its user-base secure is a keen issue that its system and network administrators have to consider. The IT department at Cornell College has utilized all of this knowledge to develop and provide a secure network for its student body and faculty.

On many occasions, as a penetration tester, we will have to face a web application that would act as a gateway to the target system. Often times, these applications contain a login form, which we will have to test for weak credentials, SQL injection, etc. Burp Suite, an application that comes bundled by default with every install of Kali Linux, is used for security testing and scanning of web applications. SQLMap is another tool that comes bundled with every install of Kali Linux, and it is the go-to tool for finding and exploiting any form of SQL injection vulnerabilities. Burp Suite is primarily used to find vulnerabilities within a web application that would allow a hacker to find a pathway onto a system. In this paper, I will explain how various attacks work (e.g. brute-forcing credentials and SQL injection), as well as provide an overview of some attacks against a vulnerable web app utilizing Burp Suite and SQLMap along with their many features.

Hack The Box is an online platform that allows users to test and train their skills in Penetration Testing and Cyber-security. It contains a plethora of challenges that are always updated. Some of these challenges closely simulate real-world scenarios, while others are more like CTFs (Capture The Flags). Nevertheless, Hack The Box is a valuable resource if you want to level up your cyber-security skills; especially as a beginner.

In this paper, I will start my exploration of Hack the Box (HTB) machines, starting with a walk-through of an HTB machine named YPuffy. Hack the Box is an amazing platform that hosts vulnerable machines belonging to a plethora of different operating systems. As previously discussed, Hack The Box is an online platform that allows users to test and train their skills in Penetration Testing and Cyber-security. So each box that we can target as a penetration tester has its own unique challenges that we have to solve in order to obtain the flag at the end, which is used to indicate that successfully hacked the machine.