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Security Awareness Goes Young School

The Wall of Sheep is famous for promoting security awareness through the use of various shenanigans and contests. Who knows shenanigans better than kids? Therefore, to bring what we know about IT and information security to kids in grades three through high school will hopefully stimulate and mature their curiosity, creativity and innovation inherent in our hacking communities.

How else do hackers prefer to share and collaborate...at a conference!! Heal from the Wall of Sheep is organizing an ethical hacking and responsible computing conference promoting mentorship and community as core values. The conference organizers believe, “For innovation to perpetuate, it’s imperative that today’s young users are exposed to the bigger picture of how we got here and to help realize their potential.” Makes sense.

The conference is appropriately named, Hak4Kidz, focusing on STEM activities and security concerns for youths. The event location is sponsored by TechNexus, located in the Chicago downtown loop inside the Civic Opera Center, conveniently located walking distance from Union Station.

Three streams of content will be provided in the form of speakers under the age of 26 years old, workshops such as “How to Build & Run Your Own Minecraft Server” and activity stations. Activity stations will be incorporated into the Hak4Kidz jfCTF with challenges organized by age level difficulty for prizes. Hak4Kidz is currently accepting CFP submission and will close the CFP on July 15th.

According to the Hak4Kidz website ‘Activities’ section states, “Time to get your hak on with these educational activities:

  • jrCTF - junior Capture The Flag contest for prizes

  • Snap Circuits - Award winning engineering toy by Elenco

  • Networking Playground - Hooking up network gear and securing them

  • Homemade Hacks - Old tech meets new tech for alternative tech! And a robot!!

  • How I.T. Works - disassemble old electronics without getting "grounded"

  • InfoSec Career Mentoring - hacking is fun but hacking for a living is uber fun

  • Locksport - introduction to ethical lock-picking for sport only

For a first year conference there appears to be a great quantity of content to keep busy all day. Registration will be open until July 28th and the early bird discounted pricing will end on July 8th. If you plan to attend, get tickets soon before the workshop registration opens and all seats are taken.
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