Appendix E. Pre-publishing safety check (placeholder IPs, personal info) 🔒¶
These notes are published. The iron rule is never include any personally identifiable information or any information that could identify your environment.
1. The "placeholder IP" consistency rule for prose and commands¶
The IPs shown in the procedures should be standardized to placeholder values, not the real values from your own environment. (The Docker-internal IPs of the practice environment come out roughly the same for everyone, so those are fine to show as-is.)
| Role | Notation to use |
|---|---|
| Attacker (you) | 10.10.10.2 |
| Target | 10.10.10.3 |
| Practice LAN range | 10.10.10.0/24 |
| Practice target server | localhost / scanme.nmap.org (an officially sanctioned practice host) |
On your actual screen, Docker will assign different values, but rewrite them to placeholder IPs in the published text. Readers' environments will have different values anyway, so explaining with placeholder IPs is clearer.
2. Things to never include¶
- Real passwords, API keys, tokens, or private keys
- Anything that ties back to your home/work network, contract, or address; your real name; real usernames or passwords (e.g.,
/Users/本名/...) - Information about other people's devices or services (including scan results)
- Files excluded by
.gitignore(nmap's raw XML, msf's db, ngrok config, etc.)
3. Mermaid diagram color rules (unified theme)¶
The diagrams in these notes use a unified dark theme that reads well in both GitHub light and dark modes.
| Purpose | Border color |
|---|---|
| 🔴 Attack / red / danger | #f85149 |
| 🔵 Defense / information / blue | #58a6ff |
| 🟢 Start / preparation | #3fb950 |
| 🟣 Payload / post-exploitation | #bc8cff |
| 🟠 Caution / intermediate | #d29922 |
| ⚪ Neutral | #8b949e |