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Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Recorded Webinar: Making Cybersecurity Fun For Kids!

 

To view the recording:
Developing Cyber Talent Series 1: Making Cybersecurity Fun for Kids! – Crowdcast

Hak4Kidz's very own Robert Wagner, Board of Directors member since 2014, was a guest speaker on the webinar Making Cybersecurity Fun For Kids! This is a great honor to be on a panel with the esteemed co-panelists John D. Johnson, Ph.D., Somchai Rice, Ph.D. and Kate Kuehn. 

When asked about providing advice to reduce the InfoSec employment gap, Wagner responded "Making InfoSec fun is a great strategy for encouraging the next generation of InfoSec practitioners." Which is great advice for every age. Wagner continued with additional advice, "Hear what security leaders are doing today to make this possible."

From the Docent Institute's website, "This interactive webinar is designed for educators and professionals who want to learn from cybersecurity professionals who have developed engaging STEM events to get kids excited about cybersecurity as a possible career. The panelists will share examples of successful events and activities that they have led with K-12 students for over a decade, many of which you can duplicate in your own community.

Students often have no idea or misconceptions about careers in the cybersecurity field. By engaging with professionals and STEM educators, they learn that the field is broad and inclusive and that regardless of their background, there are opportunities to have a career that is exciting and rewarding. Through activities such as coding, cryptography, electronics, lock picking, and competitions, students have fun and learn that they can be a white hat hacker, using their skills to benefit society.

The panel includes founders and organizers from DEFCON R00tz Asylum, CornCon Kids, and Hak4Kidz.

Panelists:
Dr. John D. Johnson, Founder/President, Docent Institute (CornCon Kids, DEFCON R00tz Asylum)

Dr. Somchai Rice, Co-Founder/CISO, MedBlox (CornCon Kids)

Robert Wagner, Security Executive Advisor, Splunk (Hak4Kidz)

This webinar series is organized by vArmour and hosted by Docent Institute. Docent is a tax-deductible educational non-profit. Donations are used to host educational events, professional development, public outreach and for educational scholarships. Learn more about our mission at www.docentinstitute.org."


Monday, December 6, 2021

Internet Protocols: The Basics of IPv4

We all know that in order to communicate, a unique address is required. We all get mail, either in the post using a street address, or online, with an email address. 

In both cases, a unique set of information is given, and as there is only one email address at JoeShmoe445@hotmail.com, there's only one 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney, sorta. In order for a computer to be able to use the Internet, they need to have a unique address too.

In the year 1980, IPv4, or Internet Protocol version 4 was developed to make communication easier on ARPANET, the precursor to our modern-day internet. It was a set of four octets- four sets of eight bits, 1's and 0's in binary, which can then be converted into the decimal number system we humans use. 

Converting binary to decimal is simple, as each octet can only contain up to 256 bits of information. This means that IP addresses in decimal are between 0.0.0.0 - 256.256.256.256

For example, an IP address in binary would look like 11000000.10101000.00001110.01110011, while the same IP in decimal would be 192.168.14.115. If you actually count each possible address, its exactly 4,294,967,296. 

That's a really big number! 

Unfortunately, many of those addresses are reserved for special reasons, like 10.0.0.0, which is used by your own local computer network. But wait, why would you need to use a local network, where there should be plenty of unused addresses for each computer? 

Find out in part two, where we will be delving into subnetting and the five classes of IPv4 addresses!


  

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