I understand that this is sort of out of the norm but do you believe that doing a project where I hack wifi passwords and go in-detail about cryptography and the vulnerabilities that allow for this would be enough to place in a LOCAL/SCHOOL competition. Basically, I would have the viewer of my project create a personal hotspot on their phone or my phone and create a password for their new network and I would not be able to see it. It would then show up in local wi-fi networks and I’d go from there. This would all be perfectly legitimate/legal since the user will be creating the hotspot on my phone etc. I can also do denial of service attacks on the hotspot they created or demonstrate SQL Injection on a website that I CREATE PRIOR to the fair. I would explain my code that I use and the vulnerabilities that allow for this to happen and how internet service providers can stop this vulnerability.
The reason I ask is because I’m actually required to do the science fair but I’m not really sure what to do. I’m not trying to make it to INTEL international, I’m just trying to do a computer science project and I know that I am pretty much an expert in all things penetration testing. (BTW, I would totally do something such as building a robot or a wearable computer but the LEDS and rasberry PI, and materials would be too much of a cost and this costs nothing… ALSO, Please don’t tell me to get a mentor as almost all the mentors are for biological sciences not the physical category).
Please let me know or if you have any other ideas, please msg them to me. Thank you everyone!
EDIT: BTW, Personal hotspots are temporary so this doesn’t have any lasting effects or anything.
To me it sounds like a cool idea. It seems almost inconceivable that people are still complacent about the security of wireless networks and the Internet, but it also seems like people are. You project might be another much needed wake up call.
One thing that concerns me is that I honestly don’t know whether this is legal.
Typically for a science fair you need to have a hypothesis and test that. They want you to follow the scientific method, which makes it difficult for CS and engineering projects that are more proof of concept. Often CS project will try to optimize some variable through testing or something like that.
I would say, that aside from this science fair, you should be participating in CTFs if you aren’t already. CSAW HSF is going on right now: Sept 22 to Oct 2. Are you doing that? https://csaw.engineering.nyu.edu/hsf
Placing in science fairs at the local/school level is a lot like getting admitted into a selective college. There are not a lot of qualified judges who are available for judging at the local/school level. I have seen projects winning not because of their scientific merit but because the judge connected with the student or the project idea (I won’t be surprised if a project about baking pizza did well because the judge is a pizza lover).
For computer science or other engineering projects you have to come up with a real engineering problem, propose a solution and show that it actually works or can work. You will also be evaluated on how well you followed solid engineering practices in developing a solution.
I don’t think your idea of just showing that you can get hacked would be a appropriate for a science fair. What you are doing is just demonstrating your knowledge in that area. I would focus on developing a solution and showing how it can help prevent hackers from compromising your password.
