Bachelor of Science in Computing

Award Stage, Semester 1

November 2022

Continuous Assessment 2

Module Title: Cyber Security Defence and Operations

Assessment Type: Practical Assessment
Weighting: 20%
Maximal Possible Mark: 100 marks
Date: 02/12/2022
Introduction
You have been hired as a junior security analyst. As part of your training, you are tasked with
creating five packet captures of well know protocols to further your understanding of the operation
of each of your chosen protocols.

Required Resources
• PC / Laptop
• Latest version of Wireshark installed
• Internet access

Note: You are not required to use any virtual machines for this assessment.

Instructions
Create packet captures of five well known protocols of your choice. Four of the protocols must
contain unencrypted traffic and one protocol containing encrypted traffic.

For each of the five packet captures that you created document the following:
[20 marks for each capture]

Chosen Protocol
• Protocol name
• Brief description

Executive Summary
• Date/time of the activity
• What happened / protocol used
• Hosts / nodes involved
• The LAN segment used
• Broadcast address

Details
• Internal host IP address
• Internal host MAC address
• The host name of the internal host
• User account name / email address used if applicable
Indicators of operation
Describe the steps in the protocol conversation for your chosen protocol making sure to document,
for example:
• IP addresses
• Port numbers
• Total duration of conversation
• Operating systems used.
• Usernames
• URLs and domain names.
• Display unencrypted data such as usernames and passwords used where applicable
• Identify files downloaded where applicable

Note that the operation of each protocol will be different and not of all the items above will apply. If
you think there is anything important that is not listed above for your chosen protocol, please
document it.

Known weaknesses
For each of the protocols you have chosen research a known weakness, provide a link to the
weakness found, a brief description of the weakness and then document how to protect this
protocol from the weakness found.

You are free to use any of the suggested websites found in the course materials when researching
weaknesses.

Submission of Work
Document your work clearly and upload your work to Moodle using the provided link in the
Assessment section of your course page.

You should submit the following:

• Written report in Word or PDF format

• Assessment Cover Sheet