Total number of attendees: 20 + | Languages: EN, DE

Hack4Kids enriches itself with social engineering workshops

The twentieth Hack4Kids edition was organized in partnership with Realschule+ und Fachoberschule Konz and took place on Wednesday 28th June and Thursday 29th June 2017.This event gathered about 20 teenagers aged from 15 to 16 years old who were supervised by Sascha Rommelfangen and Matthieu Farcot, information security experts from SECURITYMADEIN.LU. This event focused on hacking, information security, programming and networking technologies. The program was made of the following workshops:

• Google search: students got introduced to advanced Google search querries and had to do several applied exercises.

• Coding with Scratch: the group got introduced to the Scratch platform and game creation logic.

• Hackathon challenge: teenagers were divided into smaller groups and had to create a game inspired by Space Invaders.

• Social engineering: pupils were introduced to human hacking and related stalking issues. Applied exercises including role playing initiated the pupils to trust issues in social interactions over the Internet.

• Internet of Things: a presentation about the Internet of Things problematics was done.Students were reminded that a connected device is a computer. To illustrate this topic, the specific case of ransomware attacks targeting connected TVs was used among other examples.

• Hacking culture introduction: students openly discussed about what a hacker is, what is the media perception of such activities, and what does it all mean.

• Linux workshop: After a basic introduction into the history of multi-user operating systems like Unix and Linux, the teenagers were introduced to system administrator's concepts and basic controls on how to use a GNU/Linux server via a remote connection using a terminal. Students had to connect and play with a Raspberry Pi server connected to the local network. Basic commands and concepts of this new world were taught.

Globally, this event sought to make its public understand that, in the IT field, it is essential to develop critical thinking, to be especially careful with webservices / products' actual commercial speeches, to always implement last available security updates and to systematically backup data. On the whole, the group of youngsters (ass well ass their teachers) truly appreciated the event and a next session is very likely to be organized next year in partnership with SECURITYMADEIN.LU.