security avareness for teens

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Introduction
Welcome to the Hacker Highschool program! This program is designed to encourage you to
be well-rounded and resourceful. The core instruction theme is to harness the hacker curiosity
in you and to guide you progressively through your hacker education to help you grow into a
responsible role, capable of determining security and privacy problems and making proper
security decisions for yourself.
While there is a thrill to hacking partly because of the illegal nature of computer trespass, we
want to show you that it is just as big a thrill to alert others about lapses in security and make
them public without worrying about going to jail over it. As a citizen of most countries, it is not
only your right, but your responsibility, to report security and privacy leaks to the proper
authorities. You do this not because you can, but because many other people can't. You
are helping those who can't help themselves. This is what watchdog groups do. This is what
you will learn to do.



Resources
This lesson is about how to learn – a critical skill for a hacker. Hacking, in reality, is a creative
process that is based more on lifestyle than lesson. We can't teach you everything that you
need to know, but we can help you recognize what you need to learn. This is also true due
to the constant advances in the computer sciences. What we teach today may not be
relevent tomorrow. It is much better for you to embrace hacker learning habits, which are
probably the most vital part of hacking and will separate you from the script kiddie (a person
who runs hacking tools without knowing how or why they work).



Books
Books are a great way to learn the foundation and factual science of all that you are willing
to explore. Want to know something about the fundamentals of a science, like the hardware
details of your PC? Nothing will help you more than reading a current book on the subject.
The main problem with books for computers is that they quickly become old. The secret is to
learn to see the fundamental structure underneath the thin skin of details. MS-DOS and
Windows are clearly different, but both are based on principles of Boolean logic that have
driven computers since Ada, Countess of Lovelace, wrote the first computer programs in the
nineteenth century. Security and privacy concerns may have changed in the last 2,500 years,
but The Art of War by Sun Tzu covers fundamental principles that still apply today.


Magazines and Newspapers
The use of magazines and newspapers is highly encouraged for providing concise, timely
information. However, magazines are usually short on details and often focus too much on
the zeitgeist of the community. This is something that a hacker needs to know – social
engineering and password cracking, in particular, are more effective if you have a solid
grounding in pop culture – but you also need to know that 'pop journalism' isn't always
'accurate journalism'.
Another issue you should consider is the topic or theme of the magazine. A Linux magazine
will attempt to down-play Microsoft Windows, because it is a conflicting theme and that is
what their main readers want to read.



Zines and Blogs
Zines are small, often free magazines that have a very small distribution (less than 10,000
readers) and are often produced by hobbyists and amateur journalists. Zines, like the famous
2600 zine or Phrack Hacking web zine, are written by volunteers and the producers do not
edit the content for non-technical errors. This means the language can be harsh for those not
anticipating such writing. Zines have a very strong theme and are very opinionated.
However, they are more likely to show and argue both sides, as they do not care to nor have
to appease advertisers and subscribers.