A Home-Lab Python Exercise: Testing SMB Authentication (Orange Pi)
In 2020, on a personal Orange Pi Jim V1.0 device (Debian-based) that I owned, I set up a simple Python-based test to observe how authentication on the SMB protocol holds up under weak credentials. The goal was never to target a production system — it was to see, in my own lab, how quickly weak password policies can be broken in practice. It was an early step toward understanding security from the attacker's side as well as the defender's.
What the article covers
- Scope: the test ran only against my own Orange Pi device, in an isolated home-lab setup; no other system was targeted.
- Environment: a Debian-based Orange Pi Jim V1.0 running Python alongside a standard authentication-testing tool (Hydra).
- Method: authentication resilience on the SMB protocol was measured by attempting known weak username/password combinations.
- Automation and reporting: results were written to a log file and summarized by email over SMTP.
- No commands, scripts or credentials are shared in this article; the original 2020 script should not be reused without a current security review.
- Outcome: the exercise gave me a hands-on view of how real weak-credential risk plays out, and it shaped how I later prioritized access controls such as 802.1X, FreeRADIUS and Palo Alto-based segmentation in production environments.