Tech EDGE: CS4NE - Cybersecurity with Special Guest, Anthony Kava

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11/19/2024 Added

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CS4NE, Computer Science for Nebraska - Cybersecurity with Special Guest, Anthony Kava. University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Technology (Tech) Education In Digital and Global Environments (EDGE) Innovation in Teacher Education College of Education and Human Sciences | Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education

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[00:00:00.401](bright music)
[00:00:06.180]Hi, and welcome to CS4NE.
[00:00:08.460]We've got another exciting episode for you.
[00:00:10.800]I'm Guy Trainin,
[00:00:11.730]professor at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
[00:00:14.015]I'm Kimberly Ingraham-Beck from Gretnaa Public Schools.
[00:00:16.530]And today we're gonna talk to?
[00:00:17.571]Anthony Kava.
[00:00:19.274]He is a Pottawattamie Sheriff's County deputy.
[00:00:21.675]All right.
[00:00:22.669]Does some cyber forensics
[00:00:24.124]and is gonna talk to us about cybersecurity.
[00:00:26.235]And we haven't talked much about cybersecurity,
[00:00:29.280]but it is a very important
[00:00:30.960]and growing sector in computer science.
[00:00:32.997]And it is something that we need to make sure
[00:00:35.550]all students know about, whether they're going
[00:00:36.920]to be a computer scientist, a very small minority,
[00:00:39.643]or they're just gonna be alive and use technology.
[00:00:42.635]Having a basic understanding
[00:00:43.869]of cybersecurity is really essential.
[00:00:47.169]Absolutely. So let's go
[00:00:48.269]to the interview.
[00:00:49.269]Yeah.
[00:00:50.670]All right, well thanks so much for joining us.
[00:00:53.130]I'm here with Anthony Kava.
[00:00:54.466]So tell us a little bit about yourself
[00:00:56.921]and what your experience in computer science
[00:00:59.160]and cybersecurity is.
[00:01:00.306]Sure, my experience in computer science is,
[00:01:02.886]well it's mostly messy application of computer science.
[00:01:06.525]Cybersecurity, I've been interested in
[00:01:09.630]ever since, as long as I've been able to touch a computer.
[00:01:12.090]So since I was like 10 years old.
[00:01:14.139]Now, back when this first started, you know,
[00:01:17.550]they didn't call it cybersecurity back in the eighties
[00:01:19.650]and the nineties, but I was interested in how to get access
[00:01:23.185]to systems that I couldn't get access to normally.
[00:01:25.892]Oh, okay.
[00:01:26.725]And so the kids like that back then
[00:01:28.620]found a way to do that.
[00:01:30.270]Thankfully, that's not necessary anymore.
[00:01:31.890]Now you can, you can go to YouTube
[00:01:33.330]and you can learn how to do these things
[00:01:34.410]and you can, you know, break into virtual machines
[00:01:35.813]that you run on your own computer.
[00:01:36.892]But back then, if you wanted to see a type of system
[00:01:40.080]you didn't normally have access to,
[00:01:41.160]you had to find other ways.
[00:01:42.726]I work for the Pottawattamie County Sheriff's Office
[00:01:45.153]in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
[00:01:46.800]And so my job is that I do digital forensics examinations.
[00:01:49.488]I do cyber crime investigations.
[00:01:51.883]I work on the internet, Crimes Against Children Task Force.
[00:01:55.140]Wow.
[00:01:55.973]So I explain it to kids is that we go after bad guys
[00:01:57.990]on the internet who go after kids.
[00:01:59.972]The, I guess my interest in cybersecurity
[00:02:04.320]started when I was a kid, when I was wanting
[00:02:06.095]to get access to the internet.
[00:02:08.130]This is before the days of the worldwide web and so on,
[00:02:10.290]but I'd heard of the internet and there were ways to do it,
[00:02:12.865]usually through universities and so on,
[00:02:14.760]but, you know, a lot of schools didn't have access to it.
[00:02:16.815]So kids are growing up in a very different situation now.
[00:02:20.085]Yeah.
[00:02:20.940]That they're born with bandwidth
[00:02:22.770]and computers at their feet.
[00:02:24.240]So it's pretty nice.
[00:02:25.073]But I started out, my first real job
[00:02:27.535]is with a telephone company.
[00:02:29.915]Oh.
[00:02:31.050]And so I did technical support
[00:02:31.995]there for a couple of years
[00:02:33.115]and then I moved over to Pottawattamie County,
[00:02:35.640]to the IT department there.
[00:02:37.270]And in the IT department, I spent about 15 years
[00:02:40.050]doing, you know, administration,
[00:02:42.930]eventually became a supervisor, which I regretted.
[00:02:46.020]But it was great.
[00:02:47.829]It's just, it's easier to manage computers
[00:02:49.748]'cause you can tell them exactly
[00:02:51.300]what you want to do and so on.
[00:02:52.290]Humans are, humans are messy.
[00:02:55.410]Then the thing is that when I was there
[00:02:58.320]I wanted to get into cybersecurity.
[00:02:59.230]I was very interested in it
[00:03:00.810]and so we didn't have anyone doing the work.
[00:03:02.970]And so I sort of hacked my job
[00:03:04.560]where I started doing the work to the point
[00:03:07.860]where someday later on when they looked at job descriptions,
[00:03:10.590]I could say, I'm already doing the work.
[00:03:12.480]Could you put that into my title and my job description?
[00:03:14.201]Nice. And that worked out.
[00:03:15.722]I did a lot
[00:03:17.246]and I still do a lot with application security,
[00:03:19.586]where I look at the applications
[00:03:22.530]that we run in local government and in law enforcement
[00:03:24.820]and try to find vulnerabilities with them
[00:03:26.743]so that we can report 'em to the vendors
[00:03:28.500]so they can get fixed
[00:03:29.550]and we can make our systems more secure.
[00:03:32.206]I also get to do, with the digital forensic side of things,
[00:03:35.280]I get to do a little bit of crypt analysis
[00:03:36.526]'cause occasionally we run into people
[00:03:38.280]that have tried to do silly or impressive,
[00:03:40.161]clever things just to cover up evidence.
[00:03:42.821]And so there's a bit of trying to break codes
[00:03:44.564]to get into that.
[00:03:45.397]It's like solving puzzles.
[00:03:46.230]It's a lot of fun. Nice.
[00:03:47.370]And then I write code
[00:03:48.690]and do anything else nerdy that the sheriff requires.
[00:03:50.850]That's awesome.
[00:03:52.110]And I do outreach work,
[00:03:53.580]like you know, this here.
[00:03:55.230]And I was a mentor with cyber patriot teams
[00:03:58.071]for about seven years and I've spoken at Bellevue University
[00:04:03.630]and Metro Community College.
[00:04:04.950]They do cyber camps in the summer over in Omaha.
[00:04:07.258]Awesome.
[00:04:08.091]And I am, anyway, I take part in some other committees
[00:04:10.830]and that, so on.
[00:04:11.663]I stay busy.
[00:04:12.496]All right, so what information do you have for teachers
[00:04:14.590]to know about cybersecurity?
[00:04:16.530]Well, for me, one of the big things that teachers can,
[00:04:19.554]I guess can instill in the students
[00:04:21.493]is gonna be understanding and appreciation of,
[00:04:25.410]I think it's called layering sometimes in education
[00:04:27.555]about abstraction, layers of abstraction.
[00:04:30.510]Because the thing is that these days,
[00:04:32.117]a lot of what happens on the internet
[00:04:34.450]happens out in the cloud.
[00:04:35.716]It happens on a virtual machine
[00:04:37.276]and there's all these layers
[00:04:39.780]in between you and the actual hardware.
[00:04:41.610]And so for students to be able to understand
[00:04:43.080]what's going on when they, you know,
[00:04:44.730]click a button, what happens behind the scenes,
[00:04:45.952]they've got to know a little bit
[00:04:47.700]about how the protocols work
[00:04:49.392]and things like, I don't know
[00:04:52.260]if is OSI model still being taught?
[00:04:54.570]Yeah, yeah. Okay.
[00:04:55.680]OSI model, so they, that's it.
[00:04:57.300]An OSI model doesn't map perfectly to the way
[00:04:59.050]that networking works, but it's pretty close.
[00:05:01.890]And anyway, they have to understand
[00:05:03.510]that things get handed off layer to layer to layer to layer.
[00:05:05.317]And they might be working on a virtual machine
[00:05:07.716]inside of a docker container,
[00:05:09.433]on a hypervisor that's in a server,
[00:05:11.413]you know, data center somewhere.
[00:05:13.019]So there's all these layers to it.
[00:05:14.189]And the better that they can peer into those
[00:05:16.530]and understand how that works,
[00:05:17.370]I think that's gonna help them if they get into IT work,
[00:05:19.920]it's gonna help 'em solve problems.
[00:05:21.150]They can into cybersecurity work,
[00:05:22.110]it's gonna help them find vulnerabilities,
[00:05:23.730]that's gonna help them, I guess,
[00:05:25.290]close the doors before the bad guys can find them.
[00:05:27.179]Awesome.
[00:05:28.217]The other thing,
[00:05:29.373]the other thing I think is important is soft skills.
[00:05:32.220]Because there are a lot of very nerdy,
[00:05:35.799]very technically savvy students and professionals,
[00:05:40.410]adults out there, that just can't carry a conversation.
[00:05:43.385]You could, you wouldn't want to hang out with them.
[00:05:45.960]You wouldn't wanna talk to them.
[00:05:47.070]They're like the trope for an IT guy
[00:05:49.341]that you would not want to call.
[00:05:51.500]Right.
[00:05:52.740]And the thing is that the soft skill,
[00:05:55.821]the technical skills, how to use a computer,
[00:05:58.770]how to write code, things like that.
[00:06:00.210]Almost anybody can be taught that.
[00:06:01.830]The soft skills, if they haven't,
[00:06:04.091]if they haven't gotten an introduction to that early,
[00:06:06.930]I think it's very difficult for an employer later on
[00:06:08.850]to try to teach that to an adult.
[00:06:10.830]So for me, being a well-rounded person,
[00:06:14.610]being a well-rounded, you know, employee or practitioner
[00:06:17.460]or a researcher, that makes a big difference.
[00:06:20.346]And so if you can do the technical things
[00:06:22.355]and you can explain your wizardry to the Muggles,
[00:06:25.457]and you can, if you can do those sort of things,
[00:06:28.658]you'll go very, very far.
[00:06:31.140]Awesome.
[00:06:32.400]I've always been a big fan
[00:06:33.360]of vendor agnostic lessons as much as you can.
[00:06:36.390]Now there are certain things like, you know,
[00:06:38.070]if you learn Cisco, that's not going
[00:06:39.870]to hurt you in looking for a job.
[00:06:41.190]And it is certainly useful,
[00:06:42.216]but there are so many different makers of software
[00:06:45.570]and hardware products and networking products
[00:06:47.219]that I think the best place to start is with the principles.
[00:06:51.000]So for me, on the cybersecurity side of it,
[00:06:54.488]I always tell students, read Bruce Schneider.
[00:06:57.480]Oh yeah? So Bruce Schneider,
[00:06:59.430]he's been around for decades.
[00:07:01.241]He's a cryptographer
[00:07:03.708]or I should say yeah, he's a mathematician
[00:07:05.820]or cryptographer, computer scientist.
[00:07:07.308]In any case, smart guy.
[00:07:09.538]And he's written a number of books on cybersecurity
[00:07:12.443]and if you look through them, you'd be hard pressed
[00:07:14.603]to find a lot of very specific examples of a specific,
[00:07:17.910]you know, software version or something like that.
[00:07:19.440]Oh yeah. He taught,
[00:07:20.798]he's going to teach you how to think
[00:07:22.438]like a security professional,
[00:07:24.450]how to think about securing systems.
[00:07:25.623]And for the most part, it doesn't really matter
[00:07:27.559]what the, you know, version of the software running
[00:07:30.008]or who made the product or whatever.
[00:07:32.070]The principles are the same no matter what.
[00:07:32.917]Yeah. And I think those
[00:07:34.680]are really good lessons and.
[00:07:35.610]And finally, what advice or tips do you have
[00:07:38.790]for any students who are interested in a job
[00:07:39.940]in law enforcement, specifically digital forensics?
[00:07:43.680]Well, digital forensics and law enforcement
[00:07:45.621]and anything nerdy and technical.
[00:07:48.621]My biggest advice is be a hacker.
[00:07:52.530]Adopt the hacker mindset.
[00:07:54.108]What I mean by that is, you know,
[00:07:55.680]the word hacker usually gets used as a pejorative.
[00:07:58.350]It gets used as an insult.
[00:07:59.340]That means, you know, somebody who breaks into banks
[00:08:01.080]and steals money, whatever.
[00:08:01.913]That's not what it means.
[00:08:02.746]I mean, when I came up when I was a kid,
[00:08:03.883]a hacker meant somebody who was super interested
[00:08:06.810]in technology and liked taking things apart,
[00:08:08.910]figuring out how it worked,
[00:08:09.870]putting it back together in new crazy, creative ways
[00:08:12.785]to try to find creative uses for technology.
[00:08:15.388]That's what hacking is to me.
[00:08:17.040]And so it all, it means being a lifelong learner
[00:08:19.242]and staying infinitely curious.
[00:08:21.266]Just being curious about how these things work.
[00:08:23.670]Because when, one of the things that I've talked
[00:08:26.258]to some students and they're into IT,
[00:08:29.490]or they're into cybersecurity or digital forensics,
[00:08:31.200]whatever, and they're a little bit worried
[00:08:32.490]about how am I going to find a job?
[00:08:33.600]'Cause everyone around me grew up with these computers.
[00:08:36.000]Well the good news is that 90% of them
[00:08:37.381]don't care how it works under the hood.
[00:08:39.408]They don't take a look.
[00:08:40.414]So if you care and you go and find out how these things work
[00:08:43.182]and learn about the, you know, the technical details,
[00:08:45.913]then you're gonna have a leg up,
[00:08:48.420]and you can go get a job doing this sort of thing.
[00:08:50.068]Don't be afraid of the command prompt.
[00:08:52.443]Don't be afraid of Linux, Macs.
[00:08:54.288]These are, in what I do in law enforcement,
[00:08:56.963]digital forensics, they're kind of a niche
[00:08:59.088]because there are a lot of people that are afraid
[00:09:01.260]to open up the command prompt that are afraid
[00:09:03.180]of Linux and Macs and so on.
[00:09:04.800]If you, that's fine, then you go out there
[00:09:06.486]and learn those things and you will have a skill.
[00:09:08.910]You'll be the wizard.
[00:09:09.924]Even when you go into a room with people
[00:09:11.428]that have been doing this for years,
[00:09:12.750]some of them won't know how to do that.
[00:09:13.940]My other, I guess the big, one of the biggest things
[00:09:17.379]that you can do that's gonna help you out
[00:09:19.022]is learn a scripting language.
[00:09:20.308]So not everybody wants to program,
[00:09:22.019]not everybody wants to be a full on programmer.
[00:09:24.038]That's okay.
[00:09:25.080]Scripting languages are easy.
[00:09:26.103]You don't have to compile, you just put the commands in
[00:09:28.830]and you run them and they're super powerful.
[00:09:30.628]And so all, every computer you open up these days
[00:09:33.348]has a scripting language already installed.
[00:09:35.376]Windows is gonna have PowerShell,
[00:09:36.982]Linux is gonna have a whole bunch of a Python, especially.
[00:09:40.315]My recommendation is to learn Python.
[00:09:42.240]So I know a handful of scripting languages.
[00:09:45.330]My favorite is Pearl, but that's because I'm old.
[00:09:47.653]And so I don't recommend that kids learn Pearl necessarily,
[00:09:50.940]although it's amazing if you wanted
[00:09:53.040]to learn a really good language that works in Windows,
[00:09:54.614]it works in Linux, works on Macs, Python.
[00:09:57.218]Not only that, but a lot of the forensic tools
[00:10:00.090]that we use in criminal law enforcement, you know,
[00:10:03.060]working criminal cases, our tools have plugin capabilities
[00:10:06.780]where you can extend the functionality.
[00:10:08.035]Those plugins are written in Python.
[00:10:09.688]And so, and I've written some of those.
[00:10:11.250]And so that lets you extend the capability
[00:10:12.915]of what your tool can do.
[00:10:15.000]So if you can script,
[00:10:16.650]if you can write some code to automate things,
[00:10:18.900]you can automate out the boring,
[00:10:20.453]repetitive parts of your job
[00:10:21.919]so that you can focus on the more interesting,
[00:10:25.290]the more difficult things.
[00:10:26.123]And so that's what I do.
[00:10:27.690]I like some of, there's, I get a case in
[00:10:28.677]and there might be 10 or 20 things that I do
[00:10:30.729]on every case that's all automated.
[00:10:32.275]I run a script. Nice.
[00:10:33.483]It generates a report and I have all that done.
[00:10:36.150]And now I can move on to the things that are unique
[00:10:37.607]to this particular case.
[00:10:38.612]So it'll help you out
[00:10:39.852]and you can, I also, I think it's important.
[00:10:44.778]I guess I'll give you three more things.
[00:10:46.890]Always carry a pen.
[00:10:48.280]Okay.
[00:10:49.620]Always have a flashlight.
[00:10:50.517]Especially in law enforcement,
[00:10:51.557]you don't know when you're gonna need it,
[00:10:52.612]and try to find role models and heroes.
[00:10:57.900]And so it's usually gonna be your teacher.
[00:10:59.220]That's who it's gonna be.
[00:11:00.282]But if you're looking for other ones,
[00:11:02.460]like for me, one of my example is, is Dr. Cliff Stoll.
[00:11:05.196]So I don't know, are you familiar with him?
[00:11:07.585]I'm not, no.
[00:11:08.418]So Cliff Stoll, he's retired now,
[00:11:11.520]but he was an astronomer out in Berkeley, California.
[00:11:14.910]And back in the eighties
[00:11:15.852]because he knew a little bit about computers and that,
[00:11:18.479]he kind of got, he ended up in charge
[00:11:21.720]of their computer system out there
[00:11:22.890]because he said, okay, you know something about computers,
[00:11:24.570]now you're in charge of it.
[00:11:25.403]And so like, I think happens to a lot
[00:11:26.910]of academic in institutions.
[00:11:27.896]So anyway, part of his job was billing,
[00:11:31.318]trying to track the billing,
[00:11:33.000]'cause back then you had to pay
[00:11:33.960]for the time you spent on the computer.
[00:11:34.885]I guess we've gone full circle
[00:11:35.982]'cause now we do it with Amazon Web Services.
[00:11:37.235]But any case, he had a billing discrepancy of 75 cents
[00:11:41.340]and being a scientist, that bugged him
[00:11:43.080]and he couldn't put up with it.
[00:11:44.333]So he started looking into it.
[00:11:46.500]And then there's a long story short, this turns into a book.
[00:11:49.620]The book is called "The Cuckoo's Egg."
[00:11:51.192]Oh yeah, okay.
[00:11:52.469]But in any case, that 75 cent discrepancy
[00:11:55.736]leads down a rabbit hole that leads to a KGB,
[00:11:58.339]you know, operation and it's international intrigue.
[00:12:01.983]And so it was amazing.
[00:12:03.480]My point is that A, he was a hero of mine
[00:12:06.600]because there was digital forensics involved.
[00:12:08.220]Like he was, he wasn't, that wasn't his job.
[00:12:09.622]His job was astronomer.
[00:12:10.622]But he ended up doing a bit of forensics and investigation
[00:12:14.294]and looked into cyber crime
[00:12:15.725]before the word cyber crime existed.
[00:12:18.030]All right, well thank you so much for joining us.
[00:12:20.533]I really appreciate having you on.
[00:12:22.133]Thank you for having me.
[00:12:23.736]It was great.
[00:12:24.996]All right, that was a lot of information
[00:12:27.792]and great information.
[00:12:29.493]I'm running to fix all my passwords.
[00:12:31.479]Yes, I will have to be taking some additional steps
[00:12:35.023]to make sure everything's private
[00:12:37.226]and two factor authentication.
[00:12:39.870]Definitely a good thing to have on.
[00:12:41.278]Yes. Annoying but necessary.
[00:12:43.698]It's not that annoying.
[00:12:45.300]I've gotten used to it,
[00:12:46.230]Ours, we are all in two factor authentication,
[00:12:48.660]and it makes me feel better about most of the ways
[00:12:51.188]that I communicate, especially private information
[00:12:54.180]about students, which we need to protect,
[00:12:56.490]but also our information.
[00:12:57.720]So I'm very comfortable with that piece.
[00:12:59.230]Yeah.
[00:13:00.090]But password on old website,
[00:13:01.516]that is something to think about because I've been,
[00:13:04.620]I've had password literally hundreds of profiles
[00:13:08.277]on different things from the time
[00:13:10.501]that I was doing iPads in the classroom and all that.
[00:13:13.920]I think I've had a password for everything so yeah.
[00:13:18.131]Yep. Clean that up.
[00:13:20.294]Mhm.
[00:13:21.600]All right, what else did we learn?
[00:13:22.976]Oh man, we learned a whole lot of stuff, yeah.
[00:13:26.850]Yeah. So I teach cybersecurity.
[00:13:29.430]So there were a few things that I'm a little familiar with.
[00:13:31.470]So if you are unfamiliar
[00:13:32.794]with some of the things that he mentioned,
[00:13:34.359]we'll have some links that you can click on.
[00:13:37.173]But definitely go to his website.
[00:13:39.755]We'll have the link down here too.
[00:13:42.681]He's got tons of information and yeah, really good stuff.
[00:13:46.753]Yeah, so we will make sure
[00:13:48.960]that we revisit cybersecurity once in a while.
[00:13:51.097]It isn't kind of the top, top of mind thing,
[00:13:55.650]but this is exactly what everybody
[00:13:57.240]that breaks into your accounts is counting on.
[00:13:58.937]So we will come back to this occasionally
[00:14:01.879]and we'll see you next time on CS4NE.
[00:14:06.221](bright music)

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Tech EDGE: CS4NE - Cybersecurity with Special Guest, Anthony Kava

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