This June, Dartmouth College hosted a one-week half-day Cyber Security Camp with 12 high school students representing four Upper Valley high schools. As a continuation of the previous summer’s pilot, which included a cyber security component in the robotics camp program, the focus of this camp was on security awareness in the community and to encourage students to practice security in their every-day lives. There was no charge for this camp, which was sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Department of Computer Science and ISTS.
Through a series of hands-on activities, students experienced the importance of using strong passwords to protect their accounts; explored the use of cryptography to secure their email and instant-message communications; applied Photoshop tools to increase their awareness of (digital) image forgeries; and experimented with Tor as a way to protect their privacy through anonymizing networks. Ethical and legal concerns were an underlying theme that included an activity featuring candid discussions on topics such as digital rights management and case studies of real-world litigation relating to cyber crime. The week’s agenda included presentations by Professor Sean Smith and Sergey Bratus, senior ISTS researcher; a visit to the Rauner Library, led by librarian Ann Perbohner to view related archives; and tours of the computer science and Kiewit computing facilities.
The topics and content were identified and developed over a period of many months by a team of Dartmouth instructors, including: Apu Kapadia (Lead Instructor and ISTS Research Fellow), Jonathan Barlow (Thayer doctoral candidate), Patrick Tsang (computer science doctoral student) and Kimo Johnson (Guest Instructor and computer science doctoral candidate). The effort was developed and led by Suzanne Thompson, visiting scholar and director of the program.
For additional information on the summer robotics and cyber security program see http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/robotcamp or contact Suzanne Thompson, program director at ude.htuomtraD|nospmohT.ennazuS#ude.htuomtraD|nospmohT.ennazuS.
(source: ISTS Fall 2007 newsletter at http://www.ists.dartmouth.edu/docs/ists_v4_2_07.pdf)
(photo: Patrick Tsang)
