Prerequisites — the sysadmin → cyber skill bridge

PAM sits on top of the infrastructure you already know. These pages refresh the systems, networking, and cryptography fundamentals that any PAM platform brokers and integrates with — each tied explicitly to how a PAM platform uses it.

Page	Covers	Where PAM uses it
Linux essentials for PAM	SSH, sudo/su, users/permissions, systemd, logs — and the Linux "PAM" name clash	Linux-based appliances, the SSH proxy, target-side hardening
Linux CLI deep dive for PAM engineers	Logs, services & ports, REST API via curl/jq, network/crypto helpers, cron & scripting	Troubleshooting, automation, and high availability at the shell
Windows & Active Directory	AD objects, GPO, RDP, NTLM vs Kerberos, privileged groups, LAPS, tiered admin	AD/LDAP integration, the RDP proxy, Kerberos auth, tier models
Networking & protocols	SSH/RDP/VNC/LDAP/RADIUS/Kerberos/SAML/OIDC/SCIM/Syslog with ports & flows	Every protocol a PAM platform proxies or authenticates with
Cryptography & PKI	Symmetric/asymmetric, hashing, TLS, PKI/X.509, SSH keys, TOTP/FIDO2	Vault encryption at rest, certificate auth, key rotation, MFA

➡️ Next: the protocols for the full mechanisms, then the CEH hub — the first certification on the roadmap.

🔌 Want the full mechanism? See protocols/ for step-by-step, RFC-grounded explanations of Kerberos, RADIUS, Active Directory, LDAP, TLS, SSH, SAML and OIDC — message flows, what's encrypted and how, with Mermaid sequence diagrams.

🔁 Same fundamentals, offensive angle: the CEH hub covers this ground from an attacker's perspective — e.g. cryptography, scanning & networking, Windows/AD attacks — and its Kali course teaches the tooling from zero. They're complementary, not duplicated.