Introduction to Cyber Security: summary

The course turned out to have only cameo appearances by Cory Doctorow, and most of the lessons consisted of introducing terminology via web pages.
There were some quizzes to do, which were incredibly easy, and a little bit of sharing on the forum, but it was without purpose.
However, I did grab a few resources, which was my main reason for taking the course.




I got some summaries of recent security breaches, such as Adobe and Target, and an explanation of Stuxnet, which are short and of about the right level of difficulty for my grade 7&8 IT class. The Sophos Threatosaurus looks useful, too.

Week 2 was mostly about password security, which is something I already teach well, I think. However, I got a few audio-visuals which will go well with what I do
A side-effect of this reading is that I knuckled down to work on something I have been meaning to do for quite some time. I wrote a quick Python program to create random strong passwords (32 random alphanumerics of mixed case) for my web subscriptions, and store them in a file on my computer. The program will give me the choice of creating a new password, or looking one up. So when I go to a web site that requires me to sign in, I will run the script, which will prompt me for the name of the site (part of the name is ok), and then return the login and password

Stage 2 is to apply GnuPG to encrypt the file with my public key, so that it will be safe to store in google drive. At the moment I am encrypting and decrypting manually, but I will get that built into the program soon)

Why do this myself? Well, firstly because I can and its fun. Secondly, I don't trust cloud services like lastpass to keep my passwords safe, and thirdly because I found that I was using password recovery for almost every site I log in to!

Password generators and crackers is a topic I am hoping to introduce into one of my programming classes, using material from the excellent book Hacking Secret Cyphers with Python:
https://inventwithpython.com/hacking/index.html

Here is a list of resources obtained:

assymetric_or_public_key1020.mp4
conficker.html
ConfiguringyourownfirewallPC.mp4
Cybersecuritybreaches.mp4
digitalsignature.jpg
Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG) Mini Howto (English): Using keys.html
hashandsalt.html
mac_security_vid_1002-wm.mp4
malware.html
OpenPGP.jpg
ou_futurelearn_cyber_security_vid_1117.mp4
passwordsecurityintro.mp4
phishing.jpg
psn.html
publickeyencryption.png
securitythreatannouncements.html
Sophos_Threatsaurus_AZ.pdf
targetstuxnetadobe.html
Tim Berners-Lee audio (OU Cyber Security).flv
Week_1_Where_can_I_find_out_more.pdf
Week_2_Good_Password_Practices.pdf
Week_2_Setting_up_two-factor_authentication_on_Facebook.pdf
Week_2_Setting_up_two-factor_authentication_on_Google.pdf
Week_6_Configuring_your_own_firewall__Mac_.pdf
Week_6_Configuring_your_own_firewall__PC_.pdf
Week_7_Recovering_from_a_virus_or_other_malware.pdf
Week_8_Fix_your_browser.pdf
windows_security_vid_1002-wm.mp4

Student Surveys - Mathematics

I gave the mid-year survey to all of my students last week. Here are the results for my mathematics classes in grades 6 and 7. Almost 100% response, because I held off giving the survey until the end of the week, when several students returned from sickness.

Again I used the standard school survey, with ratings from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree), and I plotted the results onto a net on a scale of 2 to 4. Click the image to view.

Student Surveys - IT

Mid-Year survey given to all students as a Google form, to complete anonymously.
Questions are answered on a scale of 1(strongly disagree) to 4(strongly agree)

Introduction to Cyber Security

Signed up for this course offered by Futurelearn (The Open University), taught by Cory Doctorow. From reading his novels and papers, I know that he has a good balance of technical knowledge and communication skills, and I am hoping it will be an interesting 8 weeks.

I am hoping to boost my resources for when I teach these topics to middle and high school students. Its very difficult to find materials that are neither overwhelmingly technical nor superficially trivial on such things as malware, cracking, encryption, tracking, etc.