At a tender age of 9, what are you supposed to do? Hangout with your friends, play videogames, be overloaded with home works, get scolded at home!
But, what if I say at 9, you can be an accomplished hacker, an app developer, a cybersecurity expert and also a CEO of a game development firm.
Way too much? Meet 9-year-old Reuben Paul from Austin, Texas.
Reuben, who wants to become a good cyberspy, was the ‘special ambassador’ at Ground Zero Summit 2015 – a meeting of cybersecurity experts and researchers that’s one of the Asia’s biggest hacker conferences in the world.
Reuben spoke about Cyber KungFu, drawing from his experience as the youngest Shaolin Do KungFu 2nd degree black belt. The summit was addressed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh who was the chief guest.
Reuben, in September last year delivered a talk at DerbyCon on what kids can teach adults about infosec. He has since given the opening keynote speech at 2014 (ISC 2) Security Congress and the closing keynote address at the 2014 Houston Security Conference.
This is not all. According to idigitaltimes.com, in May this year Reuben demonstrated his expertise in cyberattack methods at BSides, an Austin, Texas security conference. By injecting malicious code into what seemed like a legitimate app, which he crafted live on stage, the 3rd grader managed to control an Android Phone, dump all of its contacts and call logs, run a video stream from the device and geo locate a user’s location.
Prudent Games, of which Reuben is the CEO, makes games that combine educational content with fun. Rueben’s latest creation is an app called “Cracker Proof,” which he describes as a fun tool to learn about building strong passwords.
It shows children how to come up with secure passwords and another about the basics of Bruteforce attacks, which is used by hackers, among other things, to crack passwords.