Personal messages, photos, banking information, credit card numbers, names, addresses, health records—a lot of your family's private information is stored on computers and zipping through the Internet! Cybersecurity is the act of keeping information, ranging from embarrassing baby photos to national secrets, private and viewed by only the right people. Try your hand at keeping online information safe with one of our cybersecurity science projects.
For lesson plans, see our K-12 Cybersecurity Teacher's Resource.
When you hear the word "encryption," you might think about modern computers and things like email and online bank accounts. But did you know that encryption has been around for thousands of years? In this project you will learn about the Caesar cipher, a simple type of encryption that replaces each letter of the alphabet with another letter, and demonstrate how a modern computer can crack this ancient code in just a few seconds.
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Cyber_p005
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Time Required
Short (2-5 days)
Prerequisites
Experience with Python or another programming language of your choice.
We use passwords every day for our email and other computer accounts. How secure is the password that you use? How hard would it be for someone to guess your password? How hard is it to write a computer program to guess a password? You can see for yourself by writing a simple password guesser in the computer language Python. We will get you started with some ideas, a little sample code, and a few passwords for your computer program to try and guess.
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CompSci_p046
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Time Required
Average (6-10 days)
Prerequisites
Experience with Python or another programming language. This is not a beginner-level programming project, and is only recommended for students who have at least some experience in programming.
Material Availability
Computer with internet access and permission to install software
Cost
Very Low (under $20)
Safety
Hacking into other people's password-protected accounts is a federally prosecutable offense. The program example given in this science project will only work in the context of this science project.
You might think that one sure-fire way to keep your computer safe from hackers is to disconnect it from the internet entirely. But did you know that even without internet, a computer can transmit data using light, sound, vibrations, or even heat? In this project, you will investigate how a spy or hacker can steal data from an "air-gapped" computer that has no internet connection. You can even use Google's Science Journal app to demonstrate how the data can be picked up by a nearby smartphone.
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Math_p049
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Time Required
Average (6-10 days)
Prerequisites
None
Material Availability
Desktop or laptop computer required. See materials list for details.
Cost
Very Low (under $20)
Safety
Some methods proposed in this project can cause your computer to overheat if you are not careful. This may damage your computer. See the procedure for details.
How many websites do you have accounts with that store personal information like your name, email, phone number, or mailing address? If the people running these websites are not careful, hackers could gain unauthorized access to, and even change or delete, your information. They can do this using something called SQL injection, which involves entering malicious code into text fields on a website. In this project you will learn how SQL injection works and figure out how to prevent it.
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Cyber_p008
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Time Required
Short (2-5 days)
Prerequisites
Previous experience with programming (any language). To do this project you will need to learn some basic SQL and PHP.
