Here I document my weekly progress in the ISM Program. Scroll down to see more
April 10 to April 16
Continuing research into Cybersecurity and Computer Science this week, I decided to look into a relatively new and revolutionary subset of these fields - devops. Devops is a software engineering culture and practice that aims at unifying software development and software operation. My mentor Mr. Stewart, alongside many other Cybersecurity professionals have voiced that they believe devops is going to be a very significant part of the future. Much of a DevOps Engineer’s role is in deployment, network operations, as well as planning of test and deployment. Additionally, DevOps represents a much larger combination of the Agile and Lean methodologies that have been in use and widely regarded as industry staples for an extended period of time. As said in the Agile Manifesto, the document highlighting all the rules of the Agile methodology, “Agile software development refers to a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. Agile methods or Agile processes generally promote a disciplined project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation, a leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork, self-organization and accountability, a set of engineering best practices intended to allow for rapid delivery of high-quality software, and a business approach that aligns development with customer needs and company goals.” Meanwhile, the Lean methodology focuses on providing more value with less resources, creating a more efficient process. Both of these methodologies combined have created the DevOps culture and practice, a very effective tool being implemented in operations teams across the world. Learning about DevOps was a very interesting experience, and moving forward I would like to gain some hands-on experience with the DevOps practice.
April 3 to April 9
This past week in my Independent Study and Mentorship journey I had the opportunity to meet with my mentor, Mr. Scott Stewart, again. At this visit, we were able to accomplish a great deal including discussing my progress on Final Product so far and guiding my direction for the future. Additionally, I was able to verify the mentor bio as well as the mentor log at this visit. However, I will have to get the professional picture of us at a later date since neither of us wore business attire but rather casual attire for the visit. Mr. Stewart also gave me a lot of direction on popular tools to use when penetration testing such as t shark, which is just a terminal based version of the popular Wireshark tool we were intending to use. T shark is less load intensive as it does not require a graphical interface and still captures packets. Additionally, we talked about management and organization tools such as Trello. Since project management in Cybersecurity can be a confusing and complex task, tools such as Trello allow cloud integration teams to stay organized and focused. Moving forward, I would like to make more headway penetration testing on the Final product and begin spreading word about Final Presentation Night.
March 27 to April 2
As my ISM journey approaches its culmination and April begins, my focus on the past week has been gearing up for Final Presentation Night as well as beginning the most intensive part of the final product I am working on with Akash Baskaran, penetration testing wireless networks. In the past week, I have made, edited, and ordered my final presentation night invitations. Wanting to continue with the same design language as the Research Showcase invitation, I was sure to utilize the same fonts, color schemes, as well as patterns with the Final Presentation Night invitation. Moving forward I would like to distribute these to all those I would like to invite to my final presentation. Furthermore. I have been looking into penetration testing wireless networks with the help of my mentor, Mr. Stewart. For our next visit later this week, I am looking forward to finally having concrete captured packets from our setup penetration testing to show him. Furthermore, I have decided to invest more time into learning the interactions between Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, and Banking. These three fields can all play key roles within one another and I would like to learn the intricacies of how they interact in future research.
March 20 to March 26
This previous week in ISM, I met with my mentor, Scott Stewart, to discuss further regarding Cybersecurity, final product, as well as the current political climate as it relates to the field. First, we discussed several hardware requirements of the final product I am working on with Akash Baskaran, including a Raspberry Pi, a TPLiink USB Antenna, a large and stable SD card for capturing packets and Wireshark data, as well as potential bluetooth connectivity capabilities. Furthermore, we discussed the role of Cybersecurity in elections. Including how it is growing to become a party-basis issue and a matter of unprecedented national security. Additionally, Akash and I worked on making concrete progress on the final product, including a successful boot, configuration, and test run of the Raspberry Pi with the most recent version of Kali Linux flashed onto the SD card. As of currently, we have decided after much deliberation to shift the basis of the penetration testing to a remote control truck rather than a drone to improve testing time as well as stability. However, in the coming weeks we may attempt to also shift the Pi unit to a drone for war flying capability as well. In the coming weeks I would like to make further progress on final product, including successfully deploying the cloud machine as well as decrypting passwords and performing complex penetration testing attacks.