Del Mar College offers free dental services through December<\/a><\/p>\nBut at Texas A&M\u2013Corpus Christi, Islander students are using their hacking knowledge for good. They’re turning code into creativity as they gear up for the campus’s IslanderHack event, a weekend dedicated to building, innovating, and protecting.<\/p>\n
Hacking and cybersecurity aren’t just buzzwords, they’re skills you can learn at the campus. And this weekend, nearly 50 students will put those skills to the test during a 36-hour competition called IslanderHack, lessons that could lead straight to future jobs protecting major companies.<\/p>\n
When you think about someone hacking into a network, student Ellie Bell probably isn’t the first person you’d picture behind the keyboard.<\/p>\n
“We are just a group of excited nerds that are constantly struggling together and exposing each other to technology,” said Bell, a member of the Islander Cyber Society.<\/p>\n
Using a computer, online software, and critical thinking, Bell showed how easy it can be to track other devices just by connecting to the school’s Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n
“You can see people’s names, Hailey, Morgan, Ivy, Emily, Vivian, because people name their devices. I can see their MAC address, IP address. This is all the devices connected to the school network,” she explained.<\/p>\n
And no one is off limits.<\/p>\n
From there, Bell said with a little more work, everything from usernames to passwords could be up for grabs.<\/p>\n
“I can’t show you this because that would be breaking some laws, but I could spoof or fake that I am the router to your phone so then your phone talks to me asking for Google, your banking,” she said.<\/p>\n
However, Bell and other cybersecurity students, like Umaiza Azmat, say their skills are meant to educate and protect.<\/p>\n
“There’s always that stigma that it’s just coding and super isolated. In reality, cybersecurity is more teamwork and a people job. At the end of the day, our goal is to secure systems,” said Azmat.<\/p>\n
As scammers grow smarter with artificial intelligence, companies must keep up. The students shared a few simple ways to stay protected.<\/p>\n
“For example, don’t use free Wi-Fi as long as you know it’s secure,” Azmat said.<\/p>\n
“A VPN is the best way to protect yourself specifically against this attack,” Bell added.<\/p>\n
These future cyber defenders are building the skills that could power tomorrow’s tech industry.<\/p>\n
“Our job as defenders is to make sure our people are safe and are aware of those signs spam emails, the phishing, any sort of intrusion techniques,” said Azmat.<\/p>\n
Some major companies are backing the upcoming hacking event, including CITGO and Tesla.<\/p>\n
And it’s no wonder the cyber team at Texas A&M\u2013Corpus Christi currently ranks first in the state and 13th in the nation in the National Cyber League.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This weekend, nearly 50 students will put their skills to the test during a 2 day competition called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-26961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}