BYU students and alumni recently presented their research at SaintCon, a Utah Cybersecurity conference. Macen Bird, a student from our department, won the annual Hackers Challenge at the conference. This challenge involves solving technology, logical, and security related puzzles and challenges.
Anna Pratt, Cybersecurity alumni and security analyst in the SOC, gave a presentation detailing how employers and mentors can streamline their technical trainings for their employees. Training can be an unwieldy process, with employers and employees becoming frustrated by the limitations of the training. Her presentation focused on ways that employers can improve their training by setting clear expectations and taking advantage of modeling, repetition, and hands-on practice.
Cybersecurity senior Katherine Rackliffe presented her research covering the dangers of phishing calls, which use AI to clone real people’s voices and target people close to them. She is currently conducting research to see how convincing these kinds of attacks are, and how many people believe they are speaking to a real person when they receive phishing calls. Rackliffe hopes that this project will spread awareness about the danger of attacks that utilize cloned voices.
Rackliffe’s advice is to attend these conferences, saying, “I would really encourage everyone to go to conferences and extracurriculars like this. I honestly didn’t think my proposal would get accepted, and then it did! Just try going for things. The worst thing that happens is you spend five minutes on an application, and it doesn’t go anywhere. The best thing that happens is you go to amazing conferences and get the chance to present in a professional capacity.” These conferences are an excellent way to learn from people with different skill sets and research focuses.
Justin Applegate, Ava Petersen, and Justin Mott also presented their project on finding 0-day vulnerabilities in a consumer-grade home router. More information about their research can be found here.
Pratt reflected, “BYU prepares lots of opportunities for you to practice in a really controlled environment. So this was my first official conference presentation, but Cybersecurity club does a student conference every year, and I’ve presented twice at that. It’s only because I did two presentations in a club at BYU that I felt confident enough doing it at a community conference. BYU gives you such great real-world practice. So if you take advantage of those experiences BYU gives you, you will be prepared for when the real opportunity comes.”
