Prepping Students for the Cyber Defenders Hackathon
We are excited to bring the first Cyber Defenders Hackathon to Community College students of the Bay Area. The Cyber Defenders Program provides students with an introduction to the Cyber Security field through mentored internships. With the expansion of these internships to Community College students in the summer of 2017, we are now introducing Cyber Security to more students through this hackathon.
How are we preparing students for the Hackathon?
Many of the students who applied for the hackathon have had minimal coding experience and do not necessarily have prior experience with Cyber Security. To give the students a head start for the hackathon we designed an introductory course that gives them the basic knowledge to start on a project and provides an overview of the various career paths in the Cyber Security field.
Cyber Security Overview
This section introduces the various career pathways within Cyber Security as well as the state of the Cyber Security workforce.
Penetration Testing Track
A penetration tester works with a company to improve software by finding vulnerabilities. The pen tester plays the role of a hacker within a controlled environment. This section of the course demonstrates a basic penetration test using Kali Linux to take control of a Windows XP system all from within VirtualBox.
Automation Attacks & Botnets Track
As we have seen recently cyber attacks have utilized a network of computers to perform attacks. This section explains what automation attacks and botnets are, and their place in Cyber Security. The lab demonstrates how a denial of service attack works by programming a script in python.
Network Security Track
This track introduces students to how information travels from computer to computer. Covering internet protocols, ip addresses, domains etc. The lab focuses on common vulnerabilities that appear in Network Security.
Cyber Security Research and Advanced Topics
Students now have the knowledge to explore more advanced topics like malware analysis with machine learning, cryptographic hashing or many other topics. But, where can they find more information? The final lecture discusses how to find current Cyber Security research topics using Google Scholar.
