Free cybersecurity and networking activities for your class

A first lesson. Students follow their own data across the world before any vocabulary.

Packets, routers, and protocols - follow your data across the world.

The step after that: one packet, hop by hop, through every layer.

Follow a single packet through the entire internet.

Sort protocols and devices into layers until the model sticks. Good as a warm-up for several days running.

Click through both model stacks, sort protocols and devices into the right layer, then drill yourself.

Flashcards and a quiz for the port numbers the exam asks about, cleartext and encrypted side by side.

Browse, flashcard, or quiz yourself on the ports the CCST exam loves. Cleartext vs. encrypted, TCP vs. UDP.

Subnetting finally makes sense when students see the bits move. Use it before any worksheet.

Type an IP, drag the prefix slider. Watch the mask, network, and host range update bit by bit. Then quiz yourself.

How a name becomes an address, with record types and caching.

Watch DNS resolution step by step, explore record types (A, CNAME, MX, TXT) with zone file examples, and adjust TTL to understand caching trade-offs.

Latency, explained through the thing students care about: lag in games.

Discover why some online games feel smooth and others feel laggy.

Students wire up switches and routers and send packets through what they built.

Free, no account. Give a computer an address, look up isp.com, and load the page through two routers, one packet at a time.

Three sliders show why raising one of confidentiality, integrity and availability can lower another. A good discussion starter.

Drag three sliders and watch real scenarios react. See why pushing one pillar up can knock another down.

Phishing vs. whaling, virus vs. worm: browse, then quiz on real scenarios.

Phishing vs. whaling vs. vishing. Virus vs. worm vs. trojan. Browse, flashcard, then quiz yourself on real scenarios.

Compare attackers by skill, funding and motive, then match them to scenarios.

Compare every threat actor across skill, funding, and motivation. Then drill yourself on which one fits a scenario.

Malware families by what they do, with scenario drills.

Learn each malware family by behavior, then drill on identifying them from scenarios.

Why people get fooled, and how to spot it. Works for younger classes too.

Learn why social engineering works, recognize the common attacks, and drill yourself on spotting them.

Why password123 is bad: brute force and hashing, in five minutes.

Why password123 is terrible - discover brute force attacks and hashing.

The five factor types, and which combinations really count as MFA.

See all five factor categories, browse every auth method, then quiz yourself on which combos actually count as MFA.

Authentication, authorization and accounting, and the frameworks behind a security program.

The three pillars of AAA, the frameworks that shape every program, and the principles that keep them honest.

A personal way in: how much data each student creates. Good for middle school.

Calculate how much data YOU create.

From Caesar ciphers to HTTPS, as an introduction.

From Caesar ciphers to HTTPS - discover how secrets stay secret.

Hands-on: encrypt, then crack a cipher with frequency analysis.

Encrypt with Caesar ciphers, crack them with frequency analysis, and explore XOR encryption with live binary visualization.

Symmetric, asymmetric and hashing side by side, and which to use when.

Compare the three big families side by side, browse the algorithms with their key sizes and status, then drill yourself on which one to use when.

Click through a certificate chain, then drill on validation and revocation.

Click through a real-looking certificate chain, browse every related term, then drill yourself on validation levels and revocation methods.

Every firewall generation and network defense, with scenarios for picking the right one.

Every firewall generation, every network defense, with quiz scenarios for picking the right one.

What a VPN protects, what NAC does, and why MFA matters for remote logins.

How a VPN protects a connection, what NAC does, and why MFA matters for remote logins.

Wi-Fi security standards and the ciphers they use, then a quiz.

Step through every Wi-Fi security standard, browse the surrounding terms, then quiz yourself on which one uses which cipher.

Hardening one computer, with the defenses named and drilled.

Walk through how to harden an endpoint, learn the defenses by name, then drill yourself on which one is which.

Linux file permissions made visible. Pair it with the terminal.

Click rwx boxes, watch the octal update live. Run users at the file and see who gets allowed or denied.

Students read real-looking server logs with head, tail and grep, and find their own activity.

Explore actual server logs using head, tail, grep, and wc. Find your own activity hidden among hundreds of entries and learn how sysadmins debug problems.

A five-minute introduction for students who have never solved a CTF.

Never solved one before? Start here. Spot the file that does not belong, cut a login log down from twenty lines to the one that matters, and build the answer out of what you found. Ends at the real board, where there are ten waiting.

Ten challenges in forensics and log analysis, beginner to advanced, and students can write their own.

Ten cybersecurity challenges in a real terminal, and a way for students to write their own.

The incident response lifecycle, and which phase a situation belongs to.

Walk through the IR lifecycle, learn how real SOCs handle alerts, and drill yourself on which phase a situation belongs to.

Risk vocabulary, the four risk treatments, and scoring a CVE with CVSS.

Pin down the core vocab, learn the four risk treatments, score a CVE with CVSS, and quiz yourself.

Set recovery targets, choose backups and standby sites, then test the plan.

Set recovery targets, choose backup types, pick the right standby site, and test the plan.

The terminal the challenges run in, with the quiz command for 410 CCST Cybersecurity practice questions and Operation Lighthouse, a guided investigation of a breach.

A real command line, with a filesystem and logs, in a browser tab.