Question

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• Ping
• IPConfig
• Tracert
• NSLookup
• NetStat
• PuTTY

Before heading off to the cybersecurity conference Black Hat in Las Vegas, a friend of mine, Douglas Brush, posted on his LinkedIn page a warning for other InfoSec professionals. He said, “Don't go to these events to buy curtains for the house when you don't have the concrete for the foundation poured yet.”

Too many times in the many years I've been in information technology (IT), I have seen people forget they need the basics in place before they try to use their shiny new tools. Before you can use any new tools, you must have a foundation to build upon. In IT, these tools are fundamental. They are a must for any computer/InfoSec/analyst to know how to use and when to use them. It's also rather impressive when a manager who you assumed was nontechnical asks you to ping that asset, run a tracert, and discover the physical and logical addresses of the web server that is down. Sometimes they do speak your language!