STEM

Norwich U Hosts High Schoolers for Summer Cyber Camp

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 04/18/16

A Vermont college will be hosting a group of third-year and fourth-year high schoolers to teach them the basics of cybersecurity. During the week-long on-campus experience, participants will build a minicomputer, install Linux on it, and learn how to hunt down wayward Wi-Fi hotspots.

Norwich University, a military school, will be hosting the GenCyber@NU summer camp. The schedule of events includes guest speakers, a cyber treasure hunt, in which the students will protect the campus by finding the rogue hotspots, which are powered by Raspberry Pi devices; connect to the Center for Digital Forensics and perform ethical hacking exercises to identify flaws in a system; and take apart malware to figure out what it's trying to do to a compromised computer. Students will be able to take both their minicomputers and Pi devices with them at the end of the week.

The courses will be led by Norwich faculty, alumni and students. It's sponsored by a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation and the National Security Agency (NSA), and all expenses will be covered by that funding.

Norwich U runs an online cybersecurity bachelor's degree program and an online master of science program in information security and assurance and is certified by the NSA and Department of Homeland Security as a Center of Academic Excellence.