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CompTIA Security+ 3.3 CompTIA Security+ 4.5
TechKnowSurge Catalog Interactives Readable on the Wire, or Encrypted?
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Readable on the Wire, or Encrypted?

Cleartext or encrypted? Decide whether a listener on the network could read the traffic.

⚑ Complete this interactive to capture a CTF flag worth 5 points.

About this interactive

What you are doing: deciding whether someone listening on the network could read the traffic. The lesson's point is that many protocols are old and were built when security was not a concern. HTTP, FTP, SMTP and IMAP send what they carry as readable text, cleartext. Each has a secure version that encrypts it: HTTPS, SFTP or FTPS, SMTPS and IMAPS. Most of the web has moved to HTTPS, but HTTP servers are still out there. Three things do not change the answer. A username and password prompt is not encryption: FTP sends the password itself in cleartext. A site used only inside the office is still readable by anyone on that network. And the IP version is not the protocol that protects the data. IPv6 does not encrypt FTP for you, and an SFTP transfer over IPv4 is still encrypted. The video says IPv6 is a little more secure, but whether traffic is readable depends on the protocol carrying it. How to use it: find the protocol and ask whether it is the secure version. A wrong answer resets your streak and shows the right bin; land five in a row to finish.

What you'll learn

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+
3.3 Compare and contrast concepts and strategies to protect data.
4.5 Given a scenario, modify enterprise capabilities to enhance security.

Key terms

Cleartext
Data transmitted in an unencrypted, human-readable format that can be intercepted and read by any party on the network.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTP
An application-layer protocol that defines how web browsers and servers communicate to request and deliver web pages and other content, operating over TCP on port 80. HTTP transmits data in plaintext, which is why it has been largely replaced by HTTPS for sensitive content.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
HTTPS
The encrypted version of HTTP that wraps web traffic in a TLS session, operating on TCP port 443, so that the data exchanged between a browser and a web server is confidential and cannot be read or modified by an eavesdropper. HTTPS is now the standard for all web traffic, indicated by the padlock icon in a browser.
File Transfer Protocol
FTP
A standard network protocol used to transfer files between a client and a server over a TCP network.
Secure File Transfer Protocol
SFTP
A file transfer protocol that uses SSH (port 22) to encrypt data in transit, providing secure file transfer between a client and server.
Data in Transit
Data that is actively moving across a network or communication channel between two endpoints, as opposed to data sitting on a storage device. Protocols such as TLS are commonly used to encrypt data in transit so it cannot be read if intercepted.

Topics

Cleartext Hypertext Transfer Protocol Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure File Transfer Protocol Secure File Transfer Protocol Data In Transit Interactive Streak Sort

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