Lion Cipher Lab
Set up Pi-hole to block ads, trackers, and malicious domains network-wide
- Cyber / Security Engineer
- Beginner
- ~45 min
- Free · no account required
Why it matters
Most 'security' advice is a list of things not to click. Pi-hole is different: it is one piece of infrastructure you configure once that then protects every device on your network at the same time — phones, laptops, a smart TV that you can't install anything on — by refusing to look up known ad, tracker, and malicious domains at all. Building it teaches how DNS actually gates traffic, gives you a live query log to read, and leaves you running a genuine open-source defensive tool. That is the leap from consuming security tips to operating a control.
What you'll learn
- DNS sinkholing
- running an open-source tool
- editing router DNS settings
- reading DNS query logs
- managing blocklists
Steps in this lab
- What a DNS sinkhole actually is
- Meet Pi-hole and pick where it will run
- Path A — run Pi-hole in Docker
- Path B — install on a Raspberry Pi or Linux VM
- Point your router's DNS at Pi-hole
- Watch it work — read the query log
- Add blocklists — and understand the two kinds of protection
- What you built — and why it's a real milestone