As a teen, Sergey Golovanov found excitement and adventure in World of Warcraft and other online realms. And like many an enterprising gamer, he wondered if they could be hacked.
“I was interested in how I could make more gold,” he says.
His curiosity led him to learn everything he could about hacks and exploits – an interest which eventually propelled him into a career as a malware expert. Today he works for Kaspersky Lab, one of the leading players in the global effort to stop cybercriminals in their tracks. With huge databases and monitoring systems at his fingertips, he uses his knowledge to identify new threats before they compromise data and harm assets.
In an event co-sponsored by Capitol College, Golovanov spoke to students at Charles Herbert Flowers High School in Springdale, MD on April 3rd. Combining professional insights with deadpan humor, he answered their questions about the rapidly evolving cybersecurity arena and the dangers posed by viruses and botnets.
Golovanov voiced special concern about Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that can take entire companies – and even countries – offline.
He noted that DDoS attacks are, by nature, hard to protect against. “No security mechanism can be 100% sure if a machine is infected or belongs to a real user.” he said. “And it's really dangerous -- there are well-known stories about DDoS attacks where not only webpages were affected, but whole countries became disconnected from the internet.”
Daily life in Estonia, for example, was severely disrupted in 2007 as hackers targeted the web services of government and financial institutions, as well as the media. “Even the bank services were disabled, ATMs for instance,” Golovanov recalled.
Training the Next Generation
Golovanov’s presentation, conducted via a Skype video conference, was part of a program designed to provide Flowers High School students with an immersive experience in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers, including cybersecurity. Capitol College has been partnering with the career simulation software company LifeJourney to bring the students this opportunity.
“The context for this event is that some of our computer science students are interning at Capitol College, and next year we're going to have many more interns, and they're going to be required to have mentors,” explained Shaunice M. White, an educator at Flowers High. “Since we don't have anough mentors available, the idea was for them to have virtual mentorship via LifeJourney. So that's why we've started this, and why we did this today.”
“I think they really enjoyed speaking with Sergei [Golovanov]," she said."They certainly enjoyed his humor, they got all of our questions answered, and they know a little bit more about the importance of some of the classes they're taking as well. They're taking Java and C++, which Sergei mentioned as requirements for going into cybersecurity.”
“We've been partners with Capitol College for three years now, and that's been excellent. Capitol has been good to us here at Flowers,” White said.
Students said they found Golovanov’s life story inspiring and his presentation informative.
“I thought it was interesting that he wanted to do this as a teenager and he followed his dream all the way into adulthood,” said Marion Campbell II. “Now he seems to be enjoying it so much. I also found it interesting the different types of malware attacks, and how many resources they have to attack our devices.”
Fellow student Holly Jupiter said the presentation built on concepts she had learned about in her classes at Flowers. “It was really fun to hear him tell how he actually experiences all on a daily basis,” she said.
According to Dianne Veenstra, Capitol’s vice president for planning and assessment, the event was part of the college’s ongoing mission to help build the next generation of STEM-educated professionals and raise awareness about career options in technology.
“We’ve been actively involved in STEM outreach to underrepresented populations throughout the area for a number of years now,” she said. “Through collaboration with our partner schools and with LifeJourney, we can engage directly with the teachers at those schools and then they can work directly with the students.”
Golovanov joined the Lab in 2005 as a virus analyst and later became head of the firm’s Non-Intel Research Group. He conducts research into data mining and threats that target online games and social networking sites, as well as the technologies and methods used by virus writers and cybercriminal groups.
He is currently completing a doctoral degree and also teaches courses on securing computer networks.
LifeJourney, headquartered in Baltimore, was founded in 2010 by entrepreneur Rick Geritz with the goal of inspiring students to consider technology careers, while helping companies attract new talent. Leading firms such as Lockheed Martin, Intel and Kaspersky Lab lead and power the LifeJourney system.
"LifeJourney enables students to test drive their future by living a day in the life of the world's Cyber Security leaders,” Geritz said. "We are proud to have companies that share the education mission -- like Kaspersky Lab -- be represented on the LifeJourney platform.”