CryptKids Keynote

the besides DC 2017 videos are brought to you by threat quotient introducing the industry's first threat intelligence platform designed to enable threat operations and management and data tribe a new kind of startup studio Co building the next generation of commercial cyber security analytics and big data product companies welcome to the fifth annual 'besides I know I'm amazed - I didn't think we'd make it this far and the third annual kits when they are when they asked me ok when they asked me to do a kids 3 years ago I said sure and I remember afterwards being almost in tears because all I could think of was what went wrong and what wasn't right and what I felt could have been

better and how I felt like it had failed but the kids coming up to me afterwards all they focused on was what they thought was amazing and what they loved and what they thought was fantastic and they didn't see any of the stuff that I saw so I decided to relax a little now and realize that I think y'all are going to have a fabulous time we're bigger and better than ever this year we have added two kids escape rooms for those who didn't know thank you to endgame and Raytheon they have sponsored those rooms [Applause] if you'd like to attend the escape room you need to go to the booth in the crypt kids area where will queue kids and get

you the room numbers and and figure out I'm going to say this we've never done this before I'm not quite sure how to do this please be patient as we try to make this run smoothly it may not be real smooth in the beginning but we're going to do our best we'll take notes and we'll try to make it better next year we have also added a PI bakery Raspberry Pi and with the blessings of the directors I am announcing officially now and there will be flyers at both the front table and in the PI bakery there will be a pie bake-off next year so you kids have one year to work on your recipe and bake us the best pie you can

and there will be a contest and the winner of the contest will receive a black badge adult badge - besides DC

we am also really excited beyond words to announce that the individual who will be quote running of the kids CTF the share will be an eight year old lung young lady and so I want you when you go in to give her lots of support she is amazing and I'm super excited so we are actually trying to get more kids involved with teaching and running with other kids so that's our first like major staff member drumming something that's eight years old so I'm really excited about that one the last thing I want to announce is we are going to be banding again this year if you have never done this before we try to match

kids to parents for some semblance of security so that nobody tries to walk off with your kids so be patient as we move you guys through that kind of there's a little bit of a bottleneck but once we get through it it's good to go and we will if you have not read the program be having I know that I've had a lot of feedback about folks that come with their kids and they can't really go to the after-party at the Iron Horse or they don't feel the bright leaving their family and their hotel room and going out drinking we will be having this year for the very first time and hopefully for forever after this in all ages

afterparty bring your own board game where your funky PJs party tonight everyone's invited you don't have to be a kids ticket holder all children are invited and you have to bring an adult with you or you don't have to bring a child but if you're an adult and you'd prefer not to drink or you're just looking for a quiet space want to play some games and chill everyone's invited to the congressional where we do the regular kids come on down tonight between 7:00 and 10:00 and just hang out and relax have a good time kids are welcome everyone I just ask that if you are an adult and you prefer to drink to keep those two separate okay don't bring

any drinking in there and if you have already had a little bit please don't come in and ruin the kids fun okay that all being said I want to talk about our keynote introduce her when I have to find someone as a keynote I try to find somebody who can both be a voice for the kids but also bring them a message and this woman that is about to speak with you as someone I met years ago she is kind she is inclusive to all she's a champion of women in stem but she's a champion for everybody not just women I am trying not to cry as I get ready to say but she's a wonderful woman I'm so

so honored that she has agreed to come talk with us I'm so excited for her to share this with you today so I'm going to turn this over to Kimber Doucet her biography is in your program and Miss Kimber would you please come up

[Applause] good morning well good I'm glad you talked to back to me so let's just start by being real here do you guys get nervous if you have to ask a question in class what about no what about when you have to present in front of your class yeah but you still do it anyway right so I am pretty nervous but I'm gonna try to be as brave as you are every day so let's uh let's get started so welcome to a bright new hello world and my parents in the room will probably get that joke but see so hi so a little about me I'm gonna keep it really brief my name is Kimber

Doucette but everyone I know calls me bat like the fluffy little animal not the baseball thing I like bats a lot I really like comic books does anybody like comic books oh thank goodness injustice right so this little picture of me I just stuck in here because I am tearing apart a computer and I have screwdrivers in my ears don't put screwdrivers in your ears but this was actually in 2005 at Apple's Technical Training in Cupertino California and I was one of the very first women to successfully complete and get Apple certified desktop and operating system certification so I got to meet Steve Jobs which is pretty cool so I have a couple of jobs I work as

head of infrastructure engineering at 18f I'm not gonna bore you with that but basically I get to play in the cloud all day it's super fun and when I'm not doing that I'm a mission information specialist at NASA anybody heard of that one or yeah so lasers cryogenics and optics stuff ground systems super fun but mostly I like the free stickers we get I'll be honest and I really like hacking stuff so let's play GameSpot the hacker raise your hand if you think the hacker is a alright how about B okay how about C alright well I'm gonna give I mean give some of you a hint it is pretty hard to type wearing gloves and a balaclava that's that funny

mask he's wearing so we're gonna rule that guy out but a and C those are my hackers on the screen so what does that mean oh no you might have a hacker delivered in your house right now it's okay everything is gonna be fine we got this right we're gonna work together we got this so kids I'm gonna talk to your parents for a minute now so you're just gonna have to like sit patiently adults we do this right we talk while you're in the room and pretend like you're not here alright so parents let's talk about this I know there are a lot of really smart adults in the room but do you ever watch your

kid and think oh my gosh how did my kid just figure that out and maybe you have to accept that your kid might be smarter than you are at their age they're pretty observant so you kind of have to watch what you say watch what you do because they're absorbing everything like a little sponge right so let's talk about some qualities you know all these things right they're tough to parent mm-hmm they'll push back do you guys hear why a lot like who's kids say why who's kids except because I said so nope they want an answer like you've got a bad answer they want to know that you acknowledge their achievements that you think their ideas are important don't we

all right they're not just rambling they're gonna say the same thing to you a dozen times and they're just trying to get you to acknowledge that they said it right and they need some freedom to explore their ideas and it's really really hard for technical folks to watch their kids and and technical challenges and not like mmm helicopter parent right we want to save them from our failures if you put that battery in upside down it's gonna blow up your board sometimes you just barring safety issues right you have to let them fail and figure things out on their own and we all know that we're all if we're those of us in InfoSec you

realize that most of us are here because we sort of stumbled our way to this place after successes and failures through what help desk fixing stuff system administration work networking whatever so there's little bad news right does it feel like your kid wants to be in charge do they I kind of want to call the shots cuz they know what's best they got this they just need you to back off and let them do their thing and if you're doing it right which I bet most of you are you're smart kids they already know they're smart like you've reinforced this attitude you've encouraged them and now they know they're smart and now you've kind of

opened Pandora's box they have a very low boredom threshold right like five minutes ten minutes whose kids are bored I mean it just comes with it right cuz they've they've already moved on to the next thing so speaking of that mmm let's talk about some good news with freedom and guidance they're gonna do great things positive reinforcement how far does that go encouragement we all know this but sometimes we get so wrapped up in what we're doing it's kind of hard to just take a step back and realize that they're just exploring their world and we have to kind of be the conduit for them so speaking of boredom who's bored really really more adults than kids you

guys are the worst all right let's build a thing you ready all right I did not make the appropriate sacrifice to the demo gods but we're just gonna like I'll cross our fingers and do some good mojo that this actually works out so if you have a card we'll if you have a card remember I walked around and handed you a little card I want you to hold your cards up high in the air okay all my folks with card doesn't need you to come right up to the front you can do it if you're scared I believe in you and you can do it but if you don't really want to do it you can give it to a friend let's see

how many do we have how many do we have one two three four five six seven eight nine - Oh perfect great so there Legos on three separate tables look at your cards your cards have a code on them and that's all I'm gonna tell you you ready did you look at your cards to figure anything out there I'm gonna give you ten minutes or so give or take depending on how this neck the next thing goes to build the tallest you listening tallest most stable structure you can got it you got about ten minutes ready all right go okay while my Lego builders are working on this activity the rest of us are gonna be super bored if we don't

figure out something else to do so let's do something else you with me let's solve a thing who likes crypto who knows what crypto is ish all right well it's gonna be pretty clear what one little branch of crypto looks like in just a second who likes puzzles perfect let's just call this a puzzle jokes do you have any jokesters who likes jokes okay this next puzzle is joke if you know the punchline I'm begging you just zip it and you just have to sit quietly while everybody else figures it out parents no hints okay we need this activity to draw out for 10 minutes you work with me here please all right I want you to raise your hand

when you think you have the answer and the first hand I see goes up mister Franklin is gonna come find you and give you a card that I want you to hang on to okay you ready all right why did the skeleton cross the road now parents I said no hints but if you need to hand on like a device because they need a notepad or something feel free right so I'm gonna watch your hands really Oh figure out the puzzle this one's one yeah maybe oh you have it don't say it out loud mr. Franklin can you go check raise your hand so you can see you big and tall [Music] so this is kind of how your parents jobs

go when they're like this close to figuring out of things somebody beats them to the punch and gets all the credit this is life does he have it

no you don't get no grownups you people you got one right somebody figure it out you got anybody

Zeca to get a car yeah Oh check back here that's okay however my builder is doing down there okay give him a card good job yep just get one card did you get it all right we'll do one more right over here and then we're gonna I'm gonna give you the punchline okay right over there yep all right you ready let's see if he's got it

all right good job okay so here we go well added the skeleton cross the road what's the answer to get to the body shop come on come on all right so we had two folks figure that out it looks like our builders need just a couple more minutes so we'll do one more puzzle we're gonna try harder one you ready so parents you can help with this but don't give them the answer okay you're ready here we go when does it rain money

[Music] first hand up gets the card

[Music]

you can use your notepads on your phones I see a couple iPads with parents my builders are doing a great job aren't they can you give our builders a hand

[Music]

okay we got about two more minutes weirdest keynote ever right you're just sitting and solving puzzles and it's fine

all right do we need a hint so if you look at the bottom I've filled in some of the the letters of the code for you I just didn't add them to the puzzle up top so I bet if you filled in that e4 you'd get pretty close to an answer you have it all right let's check it out right over here yeah she's right there

[Music] you didn't solve it Frank Lane

[Music] we have a winner all right we ready yeah when does it rain money when there is change in the weather come on you know that's funny all right congratulate our winner all right great job let's check on their builders ok builders wrap it up put down one or two more blocks look at him scramble this is like mice crumbs okay all right that's time everyone I want you my builders to take a look at the screen can you do that for me let's talk about teamwork so teamwork the combined action of a group of people right we know what a team is I want to ask you guys a question why did you split up why did

you separate what do you think did I tell you you couldn't work together did anybody hear me say that no so I gave you some cards and they had some codes and like maybe you could have found the people that matched your codes and formed a team but that would have been three teams but either way you all worked individually which has actually never happened to me before in this exercise so we have a lot of independent thinkers here which is fantastic so I tell you what you just had about ten minutes I'm gonna give you about two minutes to work together and let's see what happens can you do that can we all work together let's see what happens if

we combine resources do you know what that means what happens if you combine the things you build you think that'll happen show me let's see all right they don't need it I don't know they can do what they want do you want to tear them down do you want to build them up you want to add somebody's to the top of yours you want to make a bigger base do all the things you have a good idea go share it with a friend okay so what we've done here it seems a split off into a bunch of individual teams which is also never happen what if all 12 people combine Legos help me make my

point here people all right so our towers are getting taller we'll just let them play for a minute and and and again if the demo goes correctly they'll have something taller together than they had separately you with me yeah okay all right so how we doing you got one more minute make it count don't get stressed out no pressure there's just like a hundred people watching you [Music] I just want to go down there and help so that paint base see that's like a good solid base you should just combine that with somebody else and put their thing on the top but yes we try everyone work together but we've got the outliers on the end down there who are the little

engineers we can tell see right here in the front row this nice young lady said everyone worked together and it'll be stronger and bigger okay there we go that's time everyone you can step back from the table let's see what we've got good job that's okay now raise your hand down here my builders if your towers taller now that you worked with a friend yeah great can I ask you all to take your seats but please hang on to your cards you'll need those cards in just a few minutes okay that is like my infrastructure sometimes you just have to lay it down and let it ride there you go all right don't forget your cards good job

everyone thank you for helping [Music] [Applause] so together we're stronger now think if I had given them 30 minutes or an hour all together with maybe the pile in the middle of the room you see how I'm working through the way this will work better next time but I think that we learned a lesson can we say it together sure okay who doesn't like spongebob right he had to make it to the top so kids you're not off the hook I gave your parents a stern lecture but you have some work to do too you ready who's paying attention raise your hand if you're paying attention touch your nose if you're paying attention all right that's about half of you what I'll

take it responsibility I could read all of these words to you but I'll just that just doesn't seem good it's just too much let's keep it simple you ready this is bad if your parents teachers or other adults to trust they're trusting you enough to use their electronics their tech go online or even better how many kids in here have parents or adults in their lives who bought them their own computer or iPad or Kindle right you guys are pretty lucky so don't set it on fire okay look at this kid this is good this kids building things doing a good job it's okay to use electronics and technical equipment and tools for things other

than they were intended because after all that's the definition of hacker right so if you do that you're hacking but don't put anything that puts yourself in harm's way like don't do things that put yourself in harm's way either in person or on the Internet there's dangers there too but I'm gonna leave that lecture for your parents if you don't know if that thing's safe or not at home at school or even here today just ask an adult okay and they'll they'll steer you in the right direction leadership leading people the state of being a leader again definitions let's break it down this is bad don't do this when you go to your group meetings please don't like pull

your friends hair or your friend of me or your enemy or any of those things but this is good look don't they look happier and they're probably not gonna get timeouts or grounded or have their Kindles confiscated so it's important to exercise leadership but another thing I want you to understand is that you can have more than one leader in a group sometimes being a leader means stepping back and let somebody else take control like take charge take control sometimes I have to step back and let somebody who knows more than me take over the project and that means you're a good leader too at least that's what I tell myself decision-making you have to make

decisions every day beginning kids pretty hard so just again let's break it down this is bad don't go to jail don't go to kid jail whether kid jail is actually jail jail or timeout in your room or you know Oh questions we'll save right till the end how's that sound so yeah don't do this but you can do this right like she's following directions she's probably been given instructions she's doing things she should do she's getting to play minecraft who doesn't like minecraft so we want you to build code Explorer but we want you to make good choices as you're doing that and and your parents will be there to help you every step of

the way so if things get tough I want you to close your eyes and take a deep breath so I'm going to teach you a trick right now for when you're stressed out it works for grownups too I totally do it all the time you ready okay who's gonna participate I look pretty silly if I'm doing this by myself I want you to remember a rhyme one two three I'm taking care of me what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a deep breath in through our nose for the count of three so and we're gonna breathe out through our mouths and when we do that we're gonna think to ourselves I'm taking care of me and if we can do that three times

it takes all the stress away there are these things called mind monkeys and they make your brain all stressed out and then your body has the physical reactions if you can take a step back and try breathing totally helps you ready it's not gonna fix everything but it's really good starts let's try it in three rows althrough your mouth don't spit on your friends and think I'm taking care of me one two three I'm taking care of me right one more time one two three I'm taking care of me don't you feel better I sure do some days are gonna be tougher than others I like cat memes it's a thing some days you'll want to rage quit

I can explain rage quitting very simply who plays video games who throws their controller when they're angry me you know what I have to do I have to go buy a new controller and I don't beat the level because my controller is broken that's called rage quitting right when you play the board game with your friends and then they're winning and then you just like storm away and don't let them have the win that's rage quitting don't do that it's tough cuz we all do it adults do it too just try not to I just want you to hang in there I like sloths true story but it can't leave this room it's a total secret but

when I pop boxes or hack things I know I love bats but actually my signature is this sloth picture or the sloth picture being like the sloth being dragged away by police and I'll leave it somewhere on the box so then people know that I got there first I want to tell you and not a condescending way that your parents and the adults in your life have a lot going on all the things you have going on like then throw on top of that bills and mortgages and jobs and marriages and stress and co-workers and then getting you clothes and new Kindles all these things right sometimes they don't realize when you're sad or frustrated

and you have to talk to them you have to tell them sometimes they won't know unless you tell them try to remember they're still learning and also remember you have a way you have a little tool I gave you a write a rhyme today to take care of yourself so if you're frustrated and you go and you scream at your parents it's gonna go in one ear and right out the other but if you can take three deep breaths first and come to them calmly I bet you're gonna find that they they hear you so ready let's see who learns ready deep breath in right isn't that nice all right here's where it gets real

you're gonna change the world and I'm not even kidding every single child in this room is gonna change the world and if you don't believe me and you don't think that's possible you could just ask your parents how much their world changed when you came into their lives about your parents will agree with me you've actually already changed the world but you still have some more to do and you're just getting started so are you ready who's ready for crib kids today who's gonna build some fun stuff who's gonna build something cool who's gonna learn to code apparently mr. Andrew Cole is teaching kids to code in PowerShell tomorrow nice who's gonna make some new friends

maybe practice some teamwork like we learned today right okay so everyone who has a card so now there should be 15 of you I'm gonna have you come line up right along this wall because I have some special prizes for you okay now I just want to let the parents know my problem solvers my three folks who solve the crypto puzzles mr. blinky bling is generously donated some electronic badges so you'll have to help them solder and then I have a donation from the Cryptologic Museum I'll by Fort Meade totally worth going to see they donated some some wonderful stuff here too so I'm gonna leave you with my special thanks I hope you all have a

wonderful time this weekend thank you for having me [Applause]