Computer Security

For the first choice session of the year, a workshop focused on computer security titled Hack This! was offered.  The session began by looking at a comparison of families of operating systems.  A diagram of UNIX and Unix-like systems can be found here.

Here are some of the major topics we covered in class to give students a better understanding of how computer security works, and how to stay safe in a deeper level than we usually have time for...

Windows Password Security
Losing a Windows password happens quite often, especially when the user is no longer a part of the organization, or has simply forgotten the password for the only administrator account on a rarely-used system.  There are several options, which you can research on your own. Our students got to try a few. It was helpful for them to learn just why it's so important to have not only a good password, but other layers of protection as well.

Mac Password Security
Mac has the reputation of being pretty secure and safe, but their efforts to be as user-friendly as possible and building everything on a UNIX platform platform have left some vulnerabilities.
In order to gain access to a Mac with a lost administrator password, the best way is to use the Mac OSX Install disc that came with the computer. There are other ways to secure your Mac and help you to remember your password that the students had a chance to discuss as well, including encrypting actual files as well as the OS.

Cracking file-level passwords
While we discovered that user passwords for operating systems are rather unsecure, password encryption for files can be very difficult to crack. We looked at the differences between methods of password cracking, such as Hash decryption, Dictionary set, and Brute force.  More information on these methods can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_cracking

Students had a much better understanding of how threats to security occur, and they learned the importance of being very careful when storing information, especially sensitive information.

Live CDs
We booted our computers using Puppy Linux and Knoppix, though we discussed the use of even more alternatives, such as Ubuntu derivaties that can run live, as well as BackTrack, DEFT, and MilaX.  A more complete list of LiveCDs can be found here.  These live CDs are ways to boot a computer with a non-functioning operating system and access the hard drive.  They are an important part of any IT toolkit for retrieving data and also running a full virus scan that can check for rootkits while the primary operating system is offline. With these tools, students can learn a really safe way to recover important work they thought they had lost to a virus or other OS corruption!

Internet Security
We took a tour of www.whatsmyip.org to explore some of the information that is passed on to a website about every visitor and ways that one can protect a computer against malicious attacks by testing what vulnerabilities exist.  Using this website, we were able to discuss how to make passwords more secure, geolocation, proxy servers, MD5 checksum.  This also led to a discussion to ports, firewalls and creating a DMZ using a dual-firewall setup.

In the End
Of course, our conversation went to all sorts of places, and our students seemed to learn and share a whole lot about the way computers work, the way to work around that, and most of all the importance of having a better understanding of this still somewhat new frontier of online life.

A Student's Reflection on How a Computer Works...

In the first few days of ITA camp, I've learned a lot about computers that I never knew before. For example we learned all about the hardware and operating systems. The hardware has lots of different parts like the monitor, motherboard, CPU, RAM, CD-ROM Drive, Hard Drive, Keyboard and Mouse. Some of the parts of the hardware I was familiar with like the monitor, CD-ROM Drive, key board and mouse.

The CPU (Central Processing Unit) is one of the parts I didn't know much about. I learned that it is responsible for handling all instructions and calculation it receives from other hardware components in the computer and software programs running on the computer.

RAM (Random Access Memory) is the place in a computer where the operating system, programs, and data are kept so that they can be quickly reached by the computer's processor. However, the data in RAM stays there only as long as your computer is running. When you turn the computer off, RAM loses its data. When you turn your computer on again, your operating system and other files are once again loaded into RAM. RAM can be compared to a person's short-term memory and the hard disk to the long-term memory. For example in the summer time you don't see some people from school, and then when u go back and you see them, it takes you a few seconds to remember their name and that's when your long-term memory comes back to your short-term memory.

A Hard Disk (Hard Disk Drive) is your computer's main storage device. It is where you would normally keep your operating system, programs and files.

UNIX is an operating system. Operating systems consist of a kernel and some system programs. The kernel is the heart of the operating system. It keeps track of files on the disk, starts programs and runs them, assigns memory and other resources to other processes. The operating system provides an interface to these parts using what is referred to as "drivers".

A driver is software which understands the operation of the device it interfaces with, such as a printer, video card, sound card or CD ROM drive. It translates commands from the operating system or user into commands understood by the component computer part it interfaces with. It also translates responses from the component back to responses that can be understood by the operating system, user.

I'm glad I got to learn about all the different parts and their duties, because now if any thing ever goes wrong with my computer, I know more about what to check for the problem and what to fix. It was really cool how they compared the system and parts to real life it made it so much easier to understand!

BY A STUDENT OF THE CLASS OF 2011

"Things I've Learned" By Eileen

Well,

We were taught the parts of a computer and where they connect to on the motherboard(the control room of the computer); things like the cpu and the RAM connect to the north bridge and the graphics card, the PCI and the IDE connect to the south bridge. The north bridge has the highest priority and everything has to go through there in order to reach the CPU and be registered.

We also learned about definitions of parts; the RAM is the temporary memory of the computer, it can be replaced if faulty and it is measured in bytes. The CPU is like the translator of the computer, it takes your commands (like what you type on a keyboard), changes it into binary (the code that computers use), and the tells that to the parts like the graphics card so that you can see what you typed on your screen.

Then we learned about how the parts are related; the RAM is similar to, but different from the hard drive in the sense that they are both memory storing devices, but the hard drive holds all of the information forever until you purposely delete it. Even if you shut down your computer and move the hard drive to another computer, all of the files will still be stored on it. The RAM loses all of it's information when you unplug the computer or remove the RAM itself.

There were a bunch of metaphors for the different computer parts, some that were helpful and some that were pretty lame. One of the better ones was that the RAM is like clothing in the sense that it's readily available and you are always wearing it, but if you want to change it you have to go back home (or to the motherboard).

I think that what we've learned about Linux will be helpful because although you can't use familiar programs like Microsoft office and Adobe, it's a heck of a lot neater looking. In addition it's easier to install than windows and free to boot (haha, pun). Also, if you're someone who has a knack for coding, you can edit Linux because it's open source and that way problems that may be commonly faced, but not always solved, can be fixed. Linux is always being updated so problems are constantly being weeded out. Besides, I think that there is a nice warm feeling that comes with working on something that is controlled by the community as opposed to a corporation.

What's most confusing are the technicalities. I can grasp what you do with these programs and hardware knowledge and I understand the basics (components, what they do), but I have trouble with understanding code and what not. Not to mention that everything goes so fast. It always has. I suppose that it is just something that I am going to need to get used to, but it's difficult. So much info is being fed to us in such a short amount of time (and we have no idea who half of the people who feed us this info are).

I have to say that personally, I am more creatively inclined and its hard for me to sit through all of these technical lessons. I prefer to just mess around and design neat stuff, not follow a bunch of mathematical steps to achieve the expected result.