Let’s get cryptic

--Originally published at Mental Droppings of a Tired Student

Chances are, you’ve had the need for a secure secret form of communication at least once in your life. Let’s say you’re planning on cheating on an exam with the help of a friend, and have the need to deliver a message without disclosing that message to prying eyes… how to achieve total security that this message won’t be intercepted by say the teacher? And if it is intercepted make it seem as innocent and unrelated to the actual topic the message itself is about?

hjsfdsm — Freestyle cheating is never a good idea. Think of something better.

Let’s get some ideas on how to be sneaky and how being a sneaky bastard makes you big bucks in the fair kingdom of technology.

Cryptography is the art of protecting information by transforming it into an unreadable format, called cipher text. Only those who possess a secret key or the correct instructions can decipher the message. All of our information is encrypted and the method used to encrypted give the information more or less security.

The earliest form of cryptography was the simple writing of a message, as most people could not read. In fact, the very word cryptography comes from the Greek words kryptos and graphein, which mean hidden and writing, respectively . Let’s look at some cool old forms of cryptography shall we?

The oldest trick in the book, so to speak, is called the Caesar Shift Cipher. It consists of wrapping a tape around a stick, and then writing the message on the wound tape. When the tape was unwound, the writing would be meaningless. The receiver of the message would of course have a stick of the same diameter and use it to decipher the message. It utilized the idea of shifting letters by an agreed upon number (three

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Why should we study computing security

--Originally published at Mental Droppings of a Tired Student

Computer security is critical in almost any industry which uses computers. Currently, most electronic devices such as computers, laptops and cellphones come with built-in firewall security software, but despite this, computers are not 100 percent accurate and dependable to protect our data.

There are many different ways of hacking into computers. It can be done through a network system, clicking into unknown links, connecting to unfamiliar Wi-Fi, downloading software and files from unsafe sites, power consumption, electromagnetic radiation waves, and many more. However, computers can be protected through well-built software and hardware. By having strong internal interactions of properties, software complexity can prevent software crash and security failure.

That being said, the answer to the question; why should we study computing security? It depends who is asking. If you’re an engineer, particularly related to computer science, I’d say because it’s your job to know about these things. If you’re a regular Joe who just happens to interact with computers on a daily basis, I’d say it’s better to be safe than sorry.

No matter what age you are, if you’re going to partake in any sort of online activity you should know at least some basic points in how to protect your computer and yourself. Skepticism is your best ally. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

Let’s cover some basic security points shall we?

1.Install AD Block

Ad block is a handy plugin to avoid those annoying weight loss or click bait adds. If you’re setting up an elderly person’s computer, or someone who isn’t quite tech savvy, just install it without explaining. They’ll never get it anyway. It also disables YouTube ads so you can watch videos without having Selena Gomez trying to convince you that her digitally enhanced hair is the product of

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Thoughts on “Critical Instructional Design”

--Originally published at Mental Droppings of a Tired Student

Sean was giving me life when he mentioned the problem with the all lives matter argument.

In general I agree with everything he said from then onward, I don’t think I was biased he just made some really good points. I never realised the flaws of instructional learning/ teaching. I suppose it’s good for cooking, like following a recipe and things that require a process. I like instructions when I plan on following them once and only once and then moving on with my life. However, as a method to teach students about what they will be doing the rest of their lives? Not such a great method.

When I was in high school I would tune out in class until the teacher finally began giving instructions, or showing us the cookie-cutter recipe to solve a problem. After all that is what they were evaluating, how well you could memorize and perform instructions, or how alike the student’s behaviour is to a machine. And I was an excellent machine, which is why I always got the best grades and realized my life and achievements were a lie when I started university.

Personalized learning became a myth to me in elementary school. I had an English professor who was incapable of keeping control of his 5th grade class and spent most of the class scolding other students or reading out loud and threatening to send you to the principal if you interrupted him. I’m big on multitasking, and I found sitting still and listening to someone read a story really difficult. So I started drawing while I listened. Boy did that get me in trouble. The professor ripped off the page I was drawing in, assuming I wasn’t able to pay attention to his lecture and draw at the

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My thoughts on Pablo’s talk

--Originally published at Mental Droppings of a Tired Student

Our second speaker had some big shoes to fill, spoiler alert: he didn’t make it.

Let’s start off with the positive aspects of his talk. I liked that he had material prepared and he does seem to have a good grasp on the concepts he touched on in his talk. The concepts were pretty standard for an introductory talk, such as phishing, malware, network attacks. He even demoed a fake Facebook login page used to obtain someone’s login information. He said you could send it as a URL to a photo and have the person click it and type in their login information, then it just redirects you to the real Facebook login.The only problem is you have to type in your information again, giving the victim of this attack a clue that something might be amiss.

I was surprised to see that he is a LIN student, and I applaud the fact that he is starting a business while still studying, I think David Noel would approve as well.

Now let’s talk about the negative aspects of the talk, which for me, ruined the entire thing. His quaint choice of analogy of comparing a network attack with courting women certainly made me raise an eyebrow. Frankly I consider it to be in very poor taste, it made me feel like I was listening to a pickup artist conference. He said something along the lines of “The goal is to attack her without her even realising she was attacked.” He was referring to a means to obtain a woman’s personal information in the midst of flirting with her. Inferring that a woman is something you can “hack” in order to obtain what you want, you know, like an object. Furthermore, injecting the word “attack” in that context is

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My thoughts on the talk with Maggie

--Originally published at Mental Droppings of a Tired Student

For our second session, we had guest speakers come in and talk to us about different experiences they have had in their careers, predominantly with a focus on hacking and security of course.

Maggie shared with us her experience speaking in front of 2000+ people at Defcon about her studies regarding GFCIs, disabling hairdryers using signals from a walkie-talkie. She shared with us how she got her internship at Intel, how she worked with amazing people and how she was fortunate enough to transition to a job in the US under Intel as well. She even shared a bit of humorous personal experiences that related to her work and inspired her to continue to work on what she loved.

The only fault I found in her talk was that it was hard for me to relate, her story seemed like a fairy tale and I’m sitting over here like “wow it must be cool to have your life together”. So I started thinking, why would the teacher ask us to stand up and scream “It’s okay to fail”, and follow it up with a story of success?

cpqir25vuaa6b34 — Maggie at Defcon (taken from her twitter account)

In the q&a session, I decided to take the opportunity to ask her to share a story of failure, so that an underachiever such as myself could relate. I think my delivery of such request came off a little more coarse than I intended. It wasn’t my intention to come off as such a Debbie downer, but it kind of comes natural to me. Hopefully my question wasn’t as memorable.

In response to my request she spoke about how it’s okay to feel like a failure because it means you are constantly improving and shows your will to keep learning and bettering yourself. I had never thought

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