Tag Archive for: florida

Florida Tech Students Break Into the World of Competitive Cybersecurity, One Hack at a Time

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Florida Tech News

Competition is down to the wire, with just minutes remaining when the solution strikes you. (Florida Tech image)

BREVARD COUNTY • MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – Competition is down to the wire, with just minutes remaining when the solution strikes you.

You race to decode a cryptic image and spend the last 30 seconds hastily deciphering Morse code while your teammate enters it as quickly as his fingers can type.

Other times, it’s 3 a.m., and you realize you’ve been staring at the same piece of code for eight hours.

Such is the nature of cybersecurity, and Josh Connolly loves it.

Josh, who will graduate with a computer engineering bachelor’s degree in May, is president and founder of FITSec, Florida Tech’s cybersecurity competition team.

When Josh enrolled at Florida Tech in 2016, he assumed a cybersecurity team already existed at the university. It didn’t.

“I was disappointed, and I thought, ‘Well, if there’s not an organization already, there needs to be one,’” Josh says.

“I had never competed before. I had very little technical ability, and I never really wanted to lead an organization—it has never been my style—but I recognized the need and decided, ‘Let’s do this.’”

In 2019, Josh created FITSec with a group of three or four of his computer engineering peers, atypical for cybersecurity competition teams, which usually consist of computer science students.

Josh quickly recognized the need to hone the team’s focus on just one competition type, deciding on CTF due to its more transferable skill set and greater competition frequency.

In CTF competitions, teams or individuals complete as many of the posed challenges as possible in an allotted time frame, usually 48 hours.

Challenges incorporate topics like open-source intelligence, cryptography, log analysis, network traffic analysis, enumeration/exploitation and more.

After completing a challenge, competitors retrieve a “flag,” which they then turn in…

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Florida teen sentenced in hack of celebrity Twitter accounts

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Posted: / Updated:

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — A Florida teenager was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison for his role in hacking the Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls and scamming people around the globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin.

Graham Ivan Clark, 18, pleaded guilty to multiple fraud charges as part of a deal with Hillsborough County prosecutors, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

Clark was the mastermind behind the scheme to take over prominent Twitter accounts and send tweets seeking Bitcoin payments, prosecutors said. During the high-profile security breach on July 15, tweets were sent from the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also targeted.

Prosecutors said Clark was tried in state court instead of federal court because he was 17 at the time of the crimes, and state law allowed greater flexibility to try a minor as an adult in a financial fraud case.

Two other men also were charged in the case. Mason Sheppard, of the United Kingdom, and Nima Fazeli, of Orlando, were charged separately in federal court.

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Global Mobile Security Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report 2020-2027 – South Florida Theater Review

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Mobile Security

“A SWOT Analysis of Mobile Security, Professional Survey Report Including Top Most Global Players Analysis with CAGR and Stock Market Up and Down.”

The “Mobile Security Market” research report presents an all-inclusive study of the global Mobile Security market. The report includes all the major trends and technologies performing a major role in the Mobile Security market development during forecast period. The key players in the market are Symantec, Trend Micro, Dell, Trustgo, Sophos, Intel, AT & T, Check Point, Webroot, Lookout. An attractiveness study has been presented for each geographic area in the report to provide a comprehensive analysis of the overall competitive scenario of the Mobile Security market globally.

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Furthermore, the report comprises an outline of the diverse tactics used by the key players in the market. It also details the competitive scenario of the Mobile Security market, placing all the key players as per their geographic presence and previous major developments. SWOT analysis is used to evaluate the growth of the major players in the global market.

The report presents a detailed segmentation Integrated App, Standalone App, Market Trend by Application Android, Blackberry, IOS, Windows of the global market based on technology, product type, application, and various processes and systems. Geographically, the market is classified into. The report also includes the strategies and regulations according to the various regions stated above. Porter’s five forces analysis describes the aspects that are presently affecting the Mobile Security market. Moreover, the report covers the value chain analysis for the Mobile Security market that describes the contributors of the value chain.

Impact Of COVID-19

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After hack at Florida plant, local officials say layers of security keep water safe

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HOLLYWOOD, Fla. – A day after Pinellas County authorities reported a cyber intruder’s failed attempt to poison the water on Friday at a plant near Tampa, officials in Miami-Dade and Broward counties said water treatment plants in South Florida are safe.

A supervisor at the Oldsmar water plant reported witnessing when the hacker changed the sodium hydroxide settings and quickly fixed it. Authorities said there were other safeguards that would have caught the chemical change. The area was hosting the Super Bowl on Sunday.

The FBI was still investigating the breach of the remote-access system on Tuesday. A. Selcuk Uluagac leads Florida International University’s Cyber-Physical Systems Security Lab. He said other systems such as the smart grid, oil and gas plants, and transportation systems use similar technologies.

“These systems should not be directly connected to the internet and also they should be layered,” Uluagac said.

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The Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department produces 320 million gallons a day of drinking water and serves nearly 2.3 million residents and thousands of tourists. Jose Cueto, the interim director of the department, said the public needs to know it’s safe and reliable.

“At no point is our treatment process vulnerable to bad actors and those type of security threats,” Cueto said on Tuesday.

Lars Schmekel, Miami-Dade County’s chief information security officer, said the local Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, a control system of software and hardware elements allow them to monitor the process.

“There are multiple levels of authentication,” Schmekel said.

In Broward County, there is a similar system of checks and balances. Joann Hussey, a spokeswoman for the city of Hollywood, said there is staff onsite around the clock, alarms that sound when things are off and only a small team is authorized to make adjustments.

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“There is no automated way for those chemicals to be added into the system if a hacker was able to get into the system,” Hussey said. “Those chemicals are added manually.”

Alan Garcia, the director of the Broward County Water and Wastewater Services, said the public has absolutely nothing to worry about.

“We are…

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