OpenSSL with cheatsheet by Ed Harmoush | Udemy
Quick Disclaimer:-
I) This is not a course review, just sharing my experience throughout the course.
II) I do not receive any kind of compensation from anyone or any organization for sharing my experience in his blog.
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Greetings, Everyone! 🌟
In my journey to become a Penetration Tester, I am well aware of the significant importance of understanding how a network works. Only by knowing and understanding the network, I will be able to play around with it, able to keep it secure. For that, I decided to learn a little about SSL / TLS and came up with Ed Harmoush’s course on Udemy through David Bombal’s YouTube channel. Although I learned a few things about the SSL in my Information Security course last semester at my university, I thought it would be great if I could get an elaborate lesson with some hands-on experience if possible. So, I took the course and went through it little by little for months. A few weeks back, I finished the course and received a course completion certificate. It seems that I am still going to learn about it in my Network Programming course this semester at my university. Well, this OpenSSL course by Ed Harmoush on Udemy was great.
First, he introduced us to some basic knowledge of what HTTP and HTTPS mean. He explained about the ‘s’ in HTTPS and the importance of it. Why it is more secure and a compulsory thing to be had when creating a site and the disadvantages of HTTP. He mentioned the OpenSSL software we were going to use in the course. The difference between SSL and TLS, introduction to cryptography, public and private keys, and some algorithms.
The sections were about the course content. He taught us how to generate the public and private keys generations. The algorithms (RSA, DSA, EC) to be used in this course were introduced. Then, the steps to inspect the keys were taught along with the pkey utility. Certification creation was also a part of this course where were taught how to create certificates and CSRs and how to inspect them. File formats and the conversions between them were also explained such as PEM, DER, and PFX.
Each type of lesson was carefully organized to make it easier for the students to learn. There were some examples with resources given in the course for easier following by the students. To be honest, I did not follow this course 100% as per the syllabus. I did not do some of the hands-on activities as I felt I did not need them for now and will learn about them when the time comes. However, I was determined to finish the course because I wanted a basic understanding of cryptographies, encryption, decryption, and many more. This course was so great that one can easily understand it even without doing the hands-on experience, but don’t take me wrong. Only by doing the hands-on, one can remember all the ways to generate the certificates and keys. I will learn it when the time comes. My next course would probably be the Python 101 course from TCM Security, as I am thinking of taking the PNPT exam soon. So, having some Python skills specifically for hacking would be an advantage. Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps I'm right. There’s only one way to find out, right? Hehehe.
For now, it’s time for me to sign off 😉.
Till then, Peace Out! ✌🏼
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Learn OpenSSL with a real-world cheatsheet by David Bombal & Ed Harmoush from Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/course/openssl-cheatsheet/
