AVisitor

We had a presentation from a former student, Michael Milvich, who, with his boss Tom, were here for MSU's career day. Michael is now working on cyber security at the Idaho National Engineering Lab (INL), primarily with respect to the electricaly power infrastructure of the United States.  His job is to try to find vulnerabilities in the software that runs the grid, including

• the operating systems involved
• the programs designed to manage the power equipment and distribution
• the communication network that carries the messages to and from the servers and the equipment managing the infrastructure.

He thus named these three (non-security-specific) course topics as the most important to prepare for security types of careers:

1. networks
2. operating systems
3. compilers

He then discussed the underlying organized crime structure involved in illegal hacking of systesms:

1. The group of people who find vulnerabilities in software/hardware systems, who then often sell their findings to
2. The group of people who figure out how to exploit these vulnerabilities, who then often sell their findings to
3. The highest level of the organized crime sydicate, who then deploy the vulnerabilities and extort money from companies under a protection scheme (we won't target your company if you cough up some dough).

Quiz

We then had our weekly quiz.