A Cybersecurity Summer Camp for High School Students Using Autonomous R/C Cars

Abstract

Cybersecurity is critical for national infrastructure, governments at all levels, the military, industry, and individual privacy. Both the government and industrial sectors in the U.S. foresee a substantial need for a proficient cybersecurity workforce. To tackle this challenge, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) jointly sponsored the GenCyber program with the goal of sparking K-12 students' interest in cybersecurity and enhancing their knowledge of cybersecurity practices and safe online behavior. In support of the GenCyber program, this paper presents the first-of-its-kind autonomous R/C car-based cybersecurity summer camp for high school students, featuring an inclusive curriculum that seamlessly integrates concepts of machine learning (ML)/artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity through the lens of an important ML application-autonomous vehicles. Beginning with an introduction to basic cybersecurity topics and technical concepts, the curriculum enables students to explore ML through hands-on experiences such as collecting front-camera images and training an autonomous driving ML model. Additionally, a series of engaging cybersecurity projects are developed focusing on secure shell (SSH) password cracking, buffer overflow attacks, and man-in-the-middle attacks. These projects are designed to launch various cybersecurity attacks against the students' self-built autonomous driving models, enhancing the teaching effectiveness and awareness of cybersecurity. Our pre- and post-camp surveys demonstrate that the camp significantly boosted students' confidence in computing, cybersecurity, and ML/AI.