Networking · 2021
Building a segmented SOHO network from scratch in a lab, then studying how data actually moves through it, and testing what happens when someone hostile is on the same segment. Design, then observe, then attack, all isolated from anything real.
All done for educational purposes on a personal, segmented lab with demo accounts. No real systems or credentials were involved.
Design and simulate a small-office network, then use it as a place to actually see networking happen, how data is transmitted, how the protocols and layers fit together, instead of just reading about it. Then take it a step further and run a few controlled attacks from inside the network to understand them from the attacker's side.
VirtualBox as the hypervisor, with pfSense as the firewall and router appliance sitting at the edge. The whole lab was walled off from the physical network: the pfSense VM's WAN adapter was host-only, and every other VM connected only to an internal network named LAB, with pfSense handing out DHCP on the 192.168.1.0/24 range. Nothing in the lab could reach the real network, and nothing on the real network could reach in.
Capturing those demo credentials was the moment the theory clicked. Seeing a plaintext password appear in Wireshark because I was sitting in the middle of the conversation makes the case for encryption and segmentation better than any textbook could.