"UTI Bank hooked in a phishing attack" "Phishing in people's accounts" "Orkut:The new danger!!"...... Most of us read such news every now and then, and wonder what could be done!! One of the solutions can be to not use internet at all. But obviously, internet has become such an eternal part of our lifestyles today, that we cannot possibly ignore it. So, to provide a sense of security and an in-depth technical knowledge of hacking to the students, IEEEASET organised a workshop on Ethical Hacking and Information Security.

The workshop was conducted by a team from IIT Guwahati along with their partner Kyrion Digital Securities, which is an IIT DELHI Alumni Venture. It lasted for two days, i.e. 16-17 january 2010. Other than the IEEE members from the college, NON-IEEE members as well as students from other colleges also attended the workshop. Teachers like Mr. Tyagi and Mr. Sanjeev also took interest in the workshop.

It was lead by Mr. shubham, who very well taught us about hacking from the scratch. He was accompanied by Mr. Tajinder and Miss Kapila. The trainer was very interactive and took immense care so as to not have even a moment of boredom. It was purely a practical session yet extremely informative.

On the first day, we were firstly introduced to the basic concept of hacking. Thereafter, the trainer started off with the proposed curriculum along with the practical implementation of each topic. The workshop covered mind intriguing topics such as Email hacking, System hacking, attacks on Networks, Web Server as a Target, Wireless Hacking, Software patching and extended authentication.

The second day started with a doubt clearing session. As by now we were aware of some of the know how of the hacking,so we were all the more engrossed. To our surprise a chocolate session was arranged for, in the break time, wherein students got chocolates for correctly answering the questions. Student's enthusiasm lived throughout the workshop. By the end of the second day, we were pretty aware of the potential cyber threats and much confident of not getting into such traps. We were also given hacking toolkit, which composed of 2 live cds, another cd containing numerous hacking softwares and training manual. Besides that all the participants were awarded with certificates from IIT Guwahati.

I was an attendee of the workshop too. And so i would say that all in all, it was immense fun and a great learning experience for me!! I thank IEEEASET for organising such an event and really seek forward to attend more of such workshops.. :)!!