Café Scientifique Looks at Ethical Hacking Oct.18

CAFE SCIENTIQUE News:
 
Local teens are invited to attend Café Scientifique NM set for 7-8:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 18 at UNM-LA in the Building 4 Computer Lab.
 
Neale Pickett of Los Alamos National Laboratory will present the talk, “Ethical Hacking and Codebreaking: A Hands-on Tutorial and Contest.”
In early 2009, Iran’s uranium enrichment program—widely believed to be aimed at developing a nuclear weapon—was set back at least two years and billions of dollars by a computer virus from the United States.  

The New Zealand-based Megaupload site has millions of dollars of equipment and money frozen while the U.S. tries to convince New Zealand to send the company’s founder—accused of Internet piracy of music, movies, and other copyrighted materials—here to appear in court.

The online organization WikiLeaks hacked in to and then published sensitive government documents and secret diplomatic cables. Julian Assange, the Swedish citizen in charge of WikiLeaks, has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, surrounded by London police, since August, 2012.

It is widely believed that if he leaves he will be arrested and find himself in a U.S. prison.  He is also a wanted man in Sweden. Here we have a diplomatic fiasco involving four national governments.

What do these situations have in common? All are significant developments within the last two years that began on the Internet and boiled over into high-profile real-world political scandals.

When I presented this Cafe in 2010, I had to make up a science fiction story about a kid whose Facebook account was hacked.  Since then, hacking as a serious political force has become a reality.  

The battlefields of the future will include the Internet, and the hacker armies attacking and defending are in high school classes right now. 

In this Cafe, we will experience HACK, an online training simulator. You will learn the basic skills you need to view the world through the eyes of a computer security expert.

Even if you don’t want to do this professionally, just knowing what a “buffer overflow” or “phishing attack” is will help you be aware of computer security any time you use a computer to write a paper, plan a birthday party, or order dinner. 

Everything in this Cafe will be legal, and you’ll learn how to legally and ethically continue studying the field of hacking and computer security.

Cafe Scientifique

Café Scientifique New Mexico is a free, fun way for teens to explore the latest ideas in science and technology. Stimulating conversations with scientists, engineers, and inventors take place in an informal and relaxed setting. Free food is served!

The program is run by teens for teens at central locations in Española/Pojoaque, Los Alamos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque. It was inspired by the adult Café Scientifique programs that have become popular throughout the world.

All teens are welcome at any Café.

LOS ALAMOS

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