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Teaching Fundamentals of Cybersecurity

Description

In this lesson, students will learn what is meant by cybersecurity and explore a few news worthy cyber attacks. They will also discuss the Internet of Things and the increase in connected devices.

Cybersecurity is the protection of computer systems, networks, and data from digital attacks. Increased connectivity via the Internet of Things and reliance on computer devices to send and store data makes users more vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Define cybersecurity
  • Describe how the Internet of Things makes people more vulnerable to cyber attacks
  • Reflect on recent cyber attacks and identify the financial and societal impact of the attack
Description

In this lesson, students will learn and examine recent cyber attacks. Cyber attacks result in financial loss, lowered trust, disruption of important services, and more. There is a growing need for cybersecurity experts, and careers in the field are lucrative with high-impact.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Evaluate recent cyber attacks and understand the negative consequences of these attacks
  • Understand career opportunities in the field of cybersecurity
Description

In this lesson, students understand how they can control and protect their footprint. As students use the Internet, they are building their digital footprint. This includes social media posts, emails, picture and video uploads amongst other online activities.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Understand how their online activity contributes to a permanent and public digital footprint
  • Articulate their own social media guidelines to protect their digital footprint
Description

In this lesson, students will learn about and discuss cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is the use of electronic communication to harass or target someone. Cyberbullying includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Understand the impact of cyberbullying, and identify unacceptable bullying behavior
  • Identify proper actions to take if they are victims of cyberbullying or if they observe someone being cyberbullied
Description

In this lesson, students will learn to recognize online predatory behavior and strategies on how to avoid and respond to it. The Internet is a great place to socialize, but it is important to be aware of risks. Common sense and following safety guidelines can help students stay safe online.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Identify predatory behavior and how to respond to it online
Description

In this lesson, students will discuss and examine policies regarding privacy and security. Using best practices like setting strong passwords, reading privacy policies, and using https can help in staying safe online.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Use best practices in personal privacy and security, including strong passwords, using https, and reading privacy policies
Description

In this lesson, students will learn about and discuss information literacy. Information literacy is having the ability to find information, evaluate information credibility, and use information effectively.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Effectively search for and evaluate resources
Description

In this lesson, students will learn what copyright laws are and how to avoid copyright infringement. They will explore why copyright laws are important and how they protect the creators.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Explain what copyright laws are and why they are important
  • Find images they are legally allowed to use in their projects
  • Accurately attribute images they find and want to use
Description

In this lesson, students will explore and discuss the ethics and legality around hacking. A security hacker is someone who seeks to break through defenses and exploit weaknesses in a computer system or network. There are white hat hackers, who help companies find and protect exploits in their systems, and black hat hackers who hack maliciously.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Identify the difference between white hat hacking and black hat hacking
  • Explain career opportunities in cybersecurity
Description

In this lesson, students will learn and practice using the Caesar Cipher. The Caesar Cipher is an encryption method that predates computers in which each letter of the message is shifted by a certain amount, called the key.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Encrypt and decrypt messages using the Caesar Cipher
Description

In this lesson, students will practice using brute force and letter frequency to crack the Caesar Cipher. The Caesar Cipher is an encryption method in which each letter of the message is shifted by a certain amount, called the key. Cracking the Caesar Cipher with brute force (trying every combination) is a trivial matter for modern computers.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Explain why the Caesar Cipher is so easy for a computer to crack
  • Use basic letter distribution analysis to decrypt a simple message
Description

In this lesson, students will learn and use the Vigenère Cipher. The Vigenère Cipher consists of several Caesar ciphers in sequence with different shift values based on a keyword, so brute force and letter frequency analysis do not work.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Explain how the Vigenère Cipher works and why it is not as easy to crack as the Caesar Cipher
Description

In this lesson, students will review the Caesar cipher and history of cryptography until the present day to bridge to the current topic of advanced cryptography. They will examine a high-level view of “hard” vs. “easy” problems. Symmetric vs. asymmetric encryption and public-key encryption will be emphasized.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Identify the problems with symmetric key encryption and why modern cryptography involves more complex mathematics

  • Explain the difference between symmetric and asymmetric encryption

Description

In this lesson, students will learn and use hashing functions. They will look at what hashing is, requirements of a good hashing algorithm, how hashing is used, what the ideal hash function does, collisions in hashing, and how hackers try to crack a hashing algorithm.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Identify what a hashing algorithm is and its related vocabulary, such as digest and collisions
  • Describe what makes an ideal hashing algorithm and why they are important in encryption and cybersecurity overall
  • Describe how malicious actors try to crack hashing algorithms
Description

In this lesson, students look at hash function development by delving into modulo math. Modulo math is very important in advanced cryptography since it’s a one-way function where the output hides the input very well. This makes it useful in creating hashing functions.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Solve simple modulo problems
  • Explain why modulo math is useful in hashing algorithms and protecting data in cybersecurity
Description

In this lesson, students will look under the hood of web sites and web applications by using “view page source” in a browser. This will enable them to see HTML markup for images, navigation, and page layouts, CSS styling, and even JavaScript source code or links to JS files. Students will also view code that has been minified and understand what that means. Lastly, students will also take a first look at OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) which is an important organization in cybersecurity.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Identify major sections of code within the view source of a web page/app
  • Understand the importance of OWASP and how it relates to the field of cybersecurity
Description

In this lesson, students will learn about and use the developer tools in a browser. Web developers actually use these to help build and test websites. Cyber professionals need to be very familiar with the different ways of looking at how sites and apps function so they can use various tools to detect vulnerabilities or even detect attacks as they are starting.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Identify major developer tools within the inspect element
  • Explain the major difference between view page source and what is rendered in the inspect tools
  • Explain in general terms what each major tool in the inspect area can show a developer
  • Explain how the developer tools can help web developers build and maintain sites, and how understanding the tools can potentially help cyber professionals who are trying to keep sites and data secure
Description

This lesson provides an overview of what SQL injection is, the impact, how it works, and how hackers use SQL to attack a site. The lesson also has connections on the Equifax cyber attack that was a very large scale SQL injection.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Understand and explain what a SQL injection attack is and the ongoing, pervasive impact of SQLi cyber attacks
Description

In this lesson, students will learn about and discuss cross-site scripting (XSS), which is another major OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) cybersecurity risk.

Objective

Students will be able to:

  • Explain what XSS is, how it works, and what kind of damage can occur from an XSS attack
  • Understand the fundamentals of how XSS attacks are prevented or at least mitigated