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Hacker IconCyber Security Resource — 40 Core Prompts & 20 Advanced Modules

This comprehensive resource contains 40 core prompts and 20 advanced modules to help you develop your skills in the cybersecurity field. Each prompt is designed to help you learn a specific topic in depth. You can create your own learning path by filtering by levels.

40 Core Prompts

Beginner

1. SOC Architecture & Operations

Describe how a modern SOC collects logs, correlates events, and integrates SIEM and SOAR. Explain which attack types SOCs are best at detecting today.

SIEM (Splunk/ELK) SOAR log pipelines alert triage incident workflows
Beginner

2. Zero Trust Security

Explain Zero Trust step-by-step and how it differs from traditional perimeter defenses. Show practical technologies used to implement it.

IAM MFA ZTNA micro-segmentation policy engines
Intermediate

3. Ransomware Analysis & Response

Describe common ransomware infection vectors, IOCs, and modern ransomware families with containment steps. Include detection and recovery guidance.

EDR/XDR file system forensics backup/restore strategies IOC hunting
Intermediate

4. Cloud Security Risks (AWS/Azure/GCP)

List the most common cloud misconfigurations and show exploitation and mitigation examples. Cover identity, storage, and compute mistakes.

Cloud IAM CloudTrail/CloudWatch S3/GCS buckets least privilege
Intermediate

5. AI in Offensive & Defensive Security

Explain how attackers use AI (phishing, automation, deepfakes) and how defenders can leverage AI for detection. Include practical defense controls.

LLM safety anomaly detection ML ops for security adversarial considerations
Advanced

6. ICS/SCADA Security Fundamentals

Map attack surfaces in industrial control systems and analyze historical incidents like Stuxnet. Provide detection and containment playbooks.

OT protocols PLC analysis ICS monitoring tools network segmentation
Advanced

7. DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) as C2 Channel

Explain how DoH can be abused for command-and-control and techniques defenders use to detect it. Include network and TLS-based indicators.

DNS/DoH mechanics TLS fingerprinting Zeek/Suricata rules proxy logs
Intermediate

8. Phishing Kits & Detection

Describe current phishing kit workflows and outline OSINT and tooling approaches to find and takedown campaigns.

URL analysis domain hunting mail headers phishing simulation
Advanced

9. Threat Hunting Playbook

Walk through a threat hunting engagement: hypotheses, data sources, tooling and how to validate IOCs. Give an example workflow.

EDR/ELK Velociraptor hunters' queries hypothesis-driven hunting
Advanced

10. Dark Web Intelligence Collection

Show how to safely collect threat intel from dark web sources and how to verify and operationalize it. Address privacy and safety.

Tor OSINT tooling forum monitoring CI/CTI pipelines
Intermediate

11. MITRE ATT&CK in Practice

Explain how to map observed telemetry to ATT&CK techniques and use the matrix for detection engineering. Provide mapping examples.

ATT&CK mapping TTP correlation detection playbooks
Intermediate

12. Packet Forensics with Wireshark

Walk through analyzing a pcap for C2, data exfiltration, or suspicious lateral movement. Provide key filters and markers.

Wireshark tcpdump protocol analysis pcap triage
Advanced

13. Malware Sandbox Analysis

Outline steps to analyze malware in a sandbox safely: static, dynamic, and behavioral analysis. Provide reporting essentials.

Cuckoo yara sandbox orchestration behavior IOC extraction
Intermediate

14. Incident Response (IR) Process

Describe an IR lifecycle for a ransomware or breach incident: containment, eradication, recovery and lessons learned.

IR playbooks forensics legal/communication coordination post-incident reporting
Intermediate

15. Web Application Pentesting Basics

Explain how to identify and exploit OWASP Top 10 issues (SQLi, XSS, CSRF) and how to recommend mitigations.

Burp Suite payload crafting secure coding guidance
Intermediate

16. Red Team vs Blue Team & Purple Team

Describe Red Team tactics and how Blue Team detection verifies coverage; explain Purple Team collaboration practices.

Adversary simulation detection validation tabletop exercises
Intermediate

17. Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) Workflows

Explain CTI collection, enrichment, and sharing (STIX/TAXII) and how to operationalize feeds into detection rules.

MISP STIX/TAXII feed ingestion enrichment pipelines
Intermediate

18. API Security Assessment

Identify common API risks and how to test authentication, authorization, rate limiting and data exposure.

OWASP API Top 10 JWT/Token handling API gateway rules
Beginner

19. SOC Analyst Daily Routine

Document the daily tasks, dashboards, alerts and prioritization steps of a SOC analyst. Include escalation rules.

SIEM dashboards triage workflows alert tuning
Intermediate

20. Insider Threat Detection

Explain user behavior analytics (UBA/UEBA) and methods to detect and mitigate insider threats without violating privacy.

UEBA DLP behavioral baselining policy & governance
Advanced

21. Zero-Day Discovery Methods (Defensive View)

Explain techniques used in vulnerability research (fuzzing, code review) and safe disclosure practices for defenders.

Fuzzers (AFL) static analysis responsible disclosure
Intermediate

22. Password Cracking & Hardening

Describe password cracking processes (hashcat/John) and list effective password policies and mitigations.

Hash algorithms salting rate limiting passwordless options
Intermediate

23. Custom SIEM Rule Development

Show how to write and validate a custom correlation/detection rule in a SIEM for a realistic threat.

SIEM query languages regex correlation logic testing
Intermediate

24. DevSecOps & CI/CD Security

Explain how to integrate SAST/DAST and container scanning into CI/CD pipelines and remediate findings.

SAST/DAST SBOM container scanning policy-as-code
Intermediate

25. Supply Chain Attacks & Defenses

Describe how software supply chain attacks operate and defenses like SBOM, code signing and provenance validation.

Sigstore SCA tools code signing SBOM practices
Intermediate

26. Wireless Network Attacks & Defenses

Explain common Wi-Fi attacks (Evil Twin, WPA2 cracking) and practical defenses for enterprise wireless.

Aircrack-ng concepts enterprise WPA2/WPA3 rogue AP detection
Advanced

27. IoT Security & Firmware Analysis

Show how to analyze firmware, extract credentials and assess IoT device attack surface.

Binwalk firmware extraction OpenOCD secure boot checks
Intermediate

28. SIEM vs XDR — Selection Guide

Compare SIEM and XDR capabilities and explain when to use each approach. Provide integration considerations.

SIEM architectures XDR telemetry use-case mapping
Advanced

29. APT Profiling & TTP Analysis

Describe how to profile advanced persistent threat groups and map their TTPs to detection coverage.

CTI analysis ATT&CK mapping attribution limits
Intermediate

30. Forensic Investigation Fundamentals

Explain disk imaging, timeline creation, RAM capture and common forensic artifacts to collect.

Autopsy FTK volatility chain of custody
Advanced

31. Kubernetes Security Hardening

Explain Pod Security, RBAC, network policies, and runtime detection for Kubernetes clusters.

K8s RBAC Falco network policies kube-bench
Advanced

32. Data Exfiltration Detection Techniques

Describe signs of data exfiltration and design detection rules to catch staged and covert exfil.

DLP anomaly detection egress monitoring steganography awareness
Intermediate

33. OSINT for Digital Footprinting

Show how to build a target profile using OSINT tools while following legal and ethical boundaries.

Maltego recon-ng theHarvester privacy-respecting methods
Advanced

34. Blockchain & Smart Contract Security

Explain smart contract vulnerabilities and how to perform an audit or exploit analysis.

Solidity security static analyzers DeFi-specific risks
Advanced

35. AI-Powered SOC Architectures

Describe how ML models can augment SOC workflows for triage and anomaly detection and practical challenges.

ML pipelines feature engineering model validation drift monitoring
Intermediate

36. Building SIEM Use Cases (Banking Example)

Design a SIEM use case to detect anomalous wire transfers including data sources and thresholds.

Detection engineering financial telemetry rule testing
Intermediate

37. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Systems

Explain DLP approaches for endpoint, network and cloud — when to use each and tuning suggestions.

DLP policies content inspection endpoint controls
Intermediate

38. Bug Bounty Hunting Workflow

Describe a structured bug bounty approach: recon, triage, PoC development and reporting.

Burp Suite disclosure etiquette program selection
Intermediate

39. Cyber Kill Chain Applied

Explain the Cyber Kill Chain stages and demonstrate mapping a real attack to the chain for detection opportunities.

Kill Chain modeling detection points playbook alignment
Beginner

40. Career Paths: Red / Blue / Purple

Outline career paths and skill ladders for Red, Blue and Purple team roles and suggested learning milestones.

Role skills matrix certifications portfolio project ideas

20 Advanced Modules

Expert

1. Kernel-Level Security & Rootkit Analysis

Explain methods to detect kernel implants, syscall hooking and kernel-mode persistence; propose mitigation plans.

WinDbg eBPF kernel reverse-engineering kernel hardening
Expert

2. EDR/XDR Mechanics & Detection Engineering

Break down agent telemetry, API hooking and behavior modeling; design rules to reduce false positives.

EDR internals Sysmon tuning detection engineering
Expert

3. Memory Forensics & Live Response

Detail RAM dump analysis, volatile artifact extraction and building live-response playbooks.

Volatility3 Rekall LiME timeline creation
Expert

4. Exploit Mitigations & Defensive Testing

Explain ASLR/DEP/CFG and how to validate their effectiveness without creating exploits.

Fuzzing mitigation testing exploit hardening checks
Expert

5. Complex Web Vulnerability Chains

Map multi-step exploitation chains (deserialization → SSRF → RCE) and detection strategies.

Burp Suite WAF tuning application logging
Expert

6. Supply Chain Compromise Detection & Resilience

Design mitigations around CI/CD, package repositories and dependency attacks with SBOMs.

Sigstore SCA pipeline integrity
Expert

7. Firmware & Hardware Security Assessment

Show hardware reverse-engineering, JTAG/SPI analysis and secure-boot validation methods.

Binwalk radare2 OpenOCD hardware debugging
Expert

8. Telemetry-Driven ML for Threat Hunting

Create a pipeline from telemetry to ML features and deploy anomaly detectors for SOC integration.

Feature engineering XGBoost/scikit-learn model ops
Expert

9. ICS/OT Deep Detection & Response

Develop ICS-specific detection signatures, network baselining and safe response playbooks.

OPC/Modbus analysis Zeek/Suricata ICS rules incident playbooks
Expert

10. Encrypted DNS Abuse Detection (DoH/DoT)

Design detection based on TLS fingerprints, traffic patterns and proxy telemetry for DoH abuse.

TLS fingerprinting Zeek scripting DoH proxy analysis
Expert

11. Kubernetes Attack Surface & Escape Detection

Create detection strategies for host escapes, misconfigured kubelets and RBAC abuse.

Falco kube-hunter seccomp/AppArmor
Expert

12. Cloud Privilege Escalation (IAM Abuse)

Simulate role chaining, metadata abuse and cross-account movement and propose detection controls.

CloudTrail analysis GuardDuty IAM policy review
Expert

13. Advanced Binary RE & Deobfuscation

Show techniques to unpack packers, remove anti-debugging and automate deobfuscation.

Ghidra/IDA Capstone Unicorn scripting
Expert

14. Active Directory: Kerberos & ACL Abuse

Analyze Kerberos tickets, DCSync, and ACL attack paths and defensive controls.

BloodHound Rubeus AD hardening practices
Expert

15. Secure Code Review for Concurrency & Race Conditions

Detect logic/time-of-check-to-time-of-use bugs and write remediation guidance.

Semgrep manual review patterns concurrency debugging
Expert

16. AI-Enabled Social Engineering Campaigns

Model multi-stage AI-enhanced social engineering and create detection & training strategies.

Phishing simulation MTA rules behavior indicators
Expert

17. Post-Exploitation Detection & Remediation

Map LOLbins, persistence patterns and lateral movement techniques to detection signatures.

Sysinternals endpoint forensics persistence hunting
Expert

18. Cryptography Misuse & Protocol Analysis

Audit TLS/PKI usage and key-management pitfalls with remediation steps.

OpenSSL cert-management crypto threat modeling
Expert

19. Red Team C2 Design (Defenders' Perspective)

Analyze C2 behaviors to build detection signatures and defensive playbooks.

C2 analysis traffic profiling detection engineering
Expert

20. Tabletop Exercises & Purple Team Metrics

Design tabletop scenarios, measure MTTD/MTTR and iterate playbooks based on metrics.

SOAR/SIEM integration KPI design educational facilitation

Training Outcomes

What happens when you complete these trainings?

Short answer: You become a highly capable, versatile cybersecurity professional — close to expert-level in many domains — but "expert" depends on depth, experience, and context.

Seniority / Titles

Senior Security Engineer, Senior SOC Analyst, Senior Threat Hunter, Senior Cloud Security Engineer

Ethical Hacker Jargon

Pentester / Red Team Operator / Purple Team Member, Threat Hunter / Incident Responder / Security Researcher

Certifications

OSCP OSCE GCFE/GCFA GCIH CISSP

Practical Outcomes

Design and operate production-ready SOC playbooks, run full red-team engagements, perform IR and forensic investigations, harden cloud and container environments.

Suggested Capstone Portfolio

  •  3 full incident response reports (with timelines, evidence, remediation)
  •  2 Purple Team case studies: Red playbook, Blue detection changes, measurable improvements
  •  1 cloud compromise simulation and remediation guide (with scripts)
  •  1 kernel or memory forensics writeup (artifact extraction + analysis)
  •  GitHub repo with detection rules (Sigma), yara rules, and reproducible lab containers