In order to be a cybersecurity professional, do I have to memorize the ports and protocols?
You should absolutely know the most common ports and protocols, not only to work in cybersecurity but to work in IT and even support. No-one is expected to memorize all possible ports and protocols, but you should focus on those that are the most common.
Here is your list to memorizeā¦
TCP:
20 FTP Data Transfer
21 FTP Control (File Transfer Protocol)
22 SSH (Secure Shell)
23 Telnet (Remote Login)
25 SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)
53 DNS (Domain Name System)
80 HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
110 POP3 (Post Office Protocol)
119 NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol)
123 NTP (Network Time Protocol)
135 Microsoft RPC (Remote Procedure Call)
139 NetBIOS Session Service
143 IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol)
161 SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)
162 SNMP Trap
179 BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)
389 LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol)
443 HTTPS (HTTP Secure)
445 SMB (Server Message Block)
465 SMTPS (SMTP Secure)
514 Remote Shell (rsh)
587 SMTP (Email submission)
636 LDAPS (Secure LDAP)
993 IMAPS (Secure IMAP)
995 POP3S (Secure POP3)
1080 SOCKS Proxy
1433 Microsoft SQL Server
1521 Oracle Database
1723 PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol)
3306 MySQL Database
3389 RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol)
5432 PostgreSQL Database
5900 VNC (Virtual Network Computing)
8000 Alternate HTTP
8080 HTTP Proxy / Alternate Web Server
8443 HTTPS Alternate
8888 Alternate HTTP
9200 Elasticsearch
27017 MongoDB
UDP:
53 DNS (Domain Name System)
67 DHCP Server (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol)
68 DHCP Client
69 TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol)
123 NTP (Network Time Protocol)
137 NetBIOS Name Service
138 NetBIOS Datagram Service
161 SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)
162 SNMP Trap
500 ISAKMP (VPN IPsec Key Exchange)
514 Syslog (System Logging)
520 RIP (Routing Information Protocol)
631 IPP (Internet Printing Protocol)
1434 Microsoft SQL Monitor
1645/1646 RADIUS Authentication/Accounting
1812/1813 RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service)
2049 NFS (Network File System)
Get some good old fashioned index cards and create your own flash cards with the port number on one side and the service on the other. Do this the old fashioned way and drill those cards when you have down time.
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