January 18, 2016 at 11:58Hacking bank cards, cars and instant messengers, and other features of training at the best Masters in the Netherlands
Hello! My name is Marat Nigmatullin. I am a student at Innopolis University who trains information technology specialists. The university is actively collaborating in partner universities from among the best universities in the world in order to adapt the best practices. Now I am in just one of these - at the University of Amsterdam and studying under the System and Network Engineering program , from the next school year this program will be offered by Innopolis University itself. The story I want to tell is quite simple, but no less interesting from this. The nuances of studying abroad, the similarity of the Dutch and Russian languages, interesting practical tasks, the university commission on ethics and many other details under the cut.
I studied at the Kazan Federal University at the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Information Technologies of the VMK. Before I entered Innopolis University, I managed to gain industrial experience at DLS , where I worked for 2 years.
I will say right away that it was very difficult to do. TOEFL I passed only the second time. Therefore, my advice to everyone who undertakes this is not to repeat my mistakes. I was preparing for the exam for 3 months, which was clearly not enough. Bookmark the preparation for more time, much more. In the speech part of the test, the practice of traveling abroad (Work and Travel) and communicating with different people there exclusively in English was especially helpful to me. Nevertheless, all the difficult exams, all the obstacles that I had overcome on the way to my goal, were worth it. Now I feel pleasure and great interest from study and from teachers.
It is worth noting that the System and Network Engineering programIt has a very high intensity: the teacher gives the material and practical lessons begin immediately after the lectures. Moreover, the tasks are directly related to the lecture material and all this goes in parallel. You can spend as much time on the practical part as you need. Before the exam, the professors check the practical task and, if the student, in their opinion, coped with the task and did it well, admits the exam. If the student did not complete the task correctly, he receives feedback with a list of tasks that need to be fixed. But you need to keep in mind that even after correction, the task may again be performed incorrectly. In this case, the teacher, first of all, looks at the student’s thinking. There are times when the student did the assignment incorrectly, but the teacher, given the time spent on the assignment,
One of the subjects that we study is called "security of networks and systems . " The teacher constantly invites different companies to the university so that they give lectures for students and give some practical assignment. One of the tasks that business representatives brought with them was to try to hack into a seemingly ordinary bank card. We needed to understand the technology (mechanism) of card hacking and how it is done in real companies. Because manufacturers of world-famous bank cards very often hold events at which different companies try to crack their new system of protection of electronic payment documents.
Well, now it's time to talk about the fundamental differences between education in Europe and Russian education. The main thing is a large amount of time allotted to practice, and a motivating presentation of information. All teachers are true enthusiasts in their field: they find a way to each student and give a strong zeal to studying the subject.
At the University of Amsterdam, I already managed to study 4 subjects: the necessary skills, classic Internet applications, network and system security and distributed systems. My favorite subject was “classic Internet applications”. Teaches its Director of System and Network Engineering Karst Kojmans. Why am I highlighting it? He talks about things that happen in everyday life that will come in handy for you in the future. In addition to providing the necessary material, it captivatingly talks about each individual technology, its advantages and disadvantages, and the specific problems faced by large corporations.
We study only in English, and in everyday life everyone speaks Dutch, which at first made me uncomfortable. But after immersion in the educational process, this receded into the background.
I live on a student campus (photo) in a room that looks more like an apartment, with all the conditions necessary for life. The campus itself is located a 5-minute walk from the University, which helps me save a lot on transport. A small number of people live in this area of Amsterdam, which I really like. I eat in the university cafeteria: lunch, dinner. I cook breakfast myself. There are 40 people in the group and only 5 students came from abroad: I am from Russia, an American, a British, a Pole and a girl from Italy.
Part of my expenses were paid for by the Global Education grant , so anyone who wants to cut bones should pay close attention to it.
I want to say right away that at the University of Amsterdam this is not called a thesis, but a research project. In total, we have two similar projects, topics for which you determine yourself or choose from the list of available ones provided by the university.
Already now, in January, I will have the first research project on how large corporations and application developers use various methods and FrameWork to check the phone for root / jailbreak. One of the brightest examples of such projects at the university is the work of one of the students who hacked a car last year .a well-known brand using the automaker’s mobile application, which is freely available in the app store and play market. He spent only a month on this project. The main difficulties of his work were that, in addition to hacking the car system, there is an ethical framework for projects: that is, a student needs to put forward a proposal for a specific project to the ethics committee of the university. He must give certain guarantees that only his personal car will be hacked and that outsiders will not be involved. Also, this university body must provide the entire list of actions that you are going to take in the project.
My own work, which I worked on over the past months, was based on working with a server located at the University of Amsterdam. It has a special board with which you can control it remotely: turn it on, off, etc. The objective of my project was to hack a boardand establish how resistant it is to hacker attacks and external influences. In this case, we used a number of techniques: we opened the server, studied how the board is arranged, how it works, used the exhaustive search method, prepared the environment in advance, disconnecting our servers from the Internet, so that we could only access them. After that, we found some vulnerabilities, having established that it is possible to send a command during authorization that will open access to this board for attackers.
Also, an interesting project is being developed by my classmates, who were mainly focused on hacking a well-known messenger through a web application and finding vulnerabilitiessystem. As it turned out, this version of the famous program, adapted for browsers, has no special security holes, but the guys managed to find certain problems. They connected to one WI-FI point all the phones available at hand and one computer for monitoring traffic and exchanged pictures using phones, examining data packets. The guys found that in each of the packages there is a link to the transferred file. That is, they could simply copy this link, redirect it to a computer and completely freely open the image on the screen or any other device. Therefore, by connecting to any public WI-FI access point, you can potentially track all the links to files that are transmitted using the messenger in this area, which is a rather serious problem.
From interesting things for myself in everyday life, I found that many words in the Dutch language and Russian have the same meaning. Let's say a faucet: both in Russian and in the language of the country of tulips, the word has two meanings at once - plumbing and building. Tea in Dutch will be the same as ours - tea.
Unfortunately or fortunately, there is simply no time left for extracurricular activity. I spend about 40-50 hours studying weekly , but, in principle, each person decides for himself how much time he should devote to classes. Someone succeeds in solving tasks faster, while someone who has learned skills helps with previously acquired skills. But then we just travel all over Europe. For example, a group and I went to Paris.
Now I'm already starting work on my own project in the companyDeloitte , headquartered in Amsterdam. The organization itself is engaged in activities in various fields, one of which is information security. In the next part I will try to tell in detail about this work and about what else impressed and amazed me at the University of Amsterdam, and I will return with a new portion of interesting nuances about getting an education abroad.
For everyone who wants to learn modern information technology, I want to say: go for it and everything will work out! Just now, at Innopolis University, the selection for higher education programs has started - this is not only a master's program, but also a bachelor's degree. All the details are here . Hope to see you soon!
I studied at the Kazan Federal University at the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Information Technologies of the VMK. Before I entered Innopolis University, I managed to gain industrial experience at DLS , where I worked for 2 years.
I will say right away that it was very difficult to do. TOEFL I passed only the second time. Therefore, my advice to everyone who undertakes this is not to repeat my mistakes. I was preparing for the exam for 3 months, which was clearly not enough. Bookmark the preparation for more time, much more. In the speech part of the test, the practice of traveling abroad (Work and Travel) and communicating with different people there exclusively in English was especially helpful to me. Nevertheless, all the difficult exams, all the obstacles that I had overcome on the way to my goal, were worth it. Now I feel pleasure and great interest from study and from teachers.
It is worth noting that the System and Network Engineering programIt has a very high intensity: the teacher gives the material and practical lessons begin immediately after the lectures. Moreover, the tasks are directly related to the lecture material and all this goes in parallel. You can spend as much time on the practical part as you need. Before the exam, the professors check the practical task and, if the student, in their opinion, coped with the task and did it well, admits the exam. If the student did not complete the task correctly, he receives feedback with a list of tasks that need to be fixed. But you need to keep in mind that even after correction, the task may again be performed incorrectly. In this case, the teacher, first of all, looks at the student’s thinking. There are times when the student did the assignment incorrectly, but the teacher, given the time spent on the assignment,
One of the subjects that we study is called "security of networks and systems . " The teacher constantly invites different companies to the university so that they give lectures for students and give some practical assignment. One of the tasks that business representatives brought with them was to try to hack into a seemingly ordinary bank card. We needed to understand the technology (mechanism) of card hacking and how it is done in real companies. Because manufacturers of world-famous bank cards very often hold events at which different companies try to crack their new system of protection of electronic payment documents.
Well, now it's time to talk about the fundamental differences between education in Europe and Russian education. The main thing is a large amount of time allotted to practice, and a motivating presentation of information. All teachers are true enthusiasts in their field: they find a way to each student and give a strong zeal to studying the subject.
At the University of Amsterdam, I already managed to study 4 subjects: the necessary skills, classic Internet applications, network and system security and distributed systems. My favorite subject was “classic Internet applications”. Teaches its Director of System and Network Engineering Karst Kojmans. Why am I highlighting it? He talks about things that happen in everyday life that will come in handy for you in the future. In addition to providing the necessary material, it captivatingly talks about each individual technology, its advantages and disadvantages, and the specific problems faced by large corporations.
We study only in English, and in everyday life everyone speaks Dutch, which at first made me uncomfortable. But after immersion in the educational process, this receded into the background.
I live on a student campus (photo) in a room that looks more like an apartment, with all the conditions necessary for life. The campus itself is located a 5-minute walk from the University, which helps me save a lot on transport. A small number of people live in this area of Amsterdam, which I really like. I eat in the university cafeteria: lunch, dinner. I cook breakfast myself. There are 40 people in the group and only 5 students came from abroad: I am from Russia, an American, a British, a Pole and a girl from Italy.
Part of my expenses were paid for by the Global Education grant , so anyone who wants to cut bones should pay close attention to it.
Graduate work
I want to say right away that at the University of Amsterdam this is not called a thesis, but a research project. In total, we have two similar projects, topics for which you determine yourself or choose from the list of available ones provided by the university.
Already now, in January, I will have the first research project on how large corporations and application developers use various methods and FrameWork to check the phone for root / jailbreak. One of the brightest examples of such projects at the university is the work of one of the students who hacked a car last year .a well-known brand using the automaker’s mobile application, which is freely available in the app store and play market. He spent only a month on this project. The main difficulties of his work were that, in addition to hacking the car system, there is an ethical framework for projects: that is, a student needs to put forward a proposal for a specific project to the ethics committee of the university. He must give certain guarantees that only his personal car will be hacked and that outsiders will not be involved. Also, this university body must provide the entire list of actions that you are going to take in the project.
My own work, which I worked on over the past months, was based on working with a server located at the University of Amsterdam. It has a special board with which you can control it remotely: turn it on, off, etc. The objective of my project was to hack a boardand establish how resistant it is to hacker attacks and external influences. In this case, we used a number of techniques: we opened the server, studied how the board is arranged, how it works, used the exhaustive search method, prepared the environment in advance, disconnecting our servers from the Internet, so that we could only access them. After that, we found some vulnerabilities, having established that it is possible to send a command during authorization that will open access to this board for attackers.
Also, an interesting project is being developed by my classmates, who were mainly focused on hacking a well-known messenger through a web application and finding vulnerabilitiessystem. As it turned out, this version of the famous program, adapted for browsers, has no special security holes, but the guys managed to find certain problems. They connected to one WI-FI point all the phones available at hand and one computer for monitoring traffic and exchanged pictures using phones, examining data packets. The guys found that in each of the packages there is a link to the transferred file. That is, they could simply copy this link, redirect it to a computer and completely freely open the image on the screen or any other device. Therefore, by connecting to any public WI-FI access point, you can potentially track all the links to files that are transmitted using the messenger in this area, which is a rather serious problem.
Interesting last
From interesting things for myself in everyday life, I found that many words in the Dutch language and Russian have the same meaning. Let's say a faucet: both in Russian and in the language of the country of tulips, the word has two meanings at once - plumbing and building. Tea in Dutch will be the same as ours - tea.
Unfortunately or fortunately, there is simply no time left for extracurricular activity. I spend about 40-50 hours studying weekly , but, in principle, each person decides for himself how much time he should devote to classes. Someone succeeds in solving tasks faster, while someone who has learned skills helps with previously acquired skills. But then we just travel all over Europe. For example, a group and I went to Paris.
Now I'm already starting work on my own project in the companyDeloitte , headquartered in Amsterdam. The organization itself is engaged in activities in various fields, one of which is information security. In the next part I will try to tell in detail about this work and about what else impressed and amazed me at the University of Amsterdam, and I will return with a new portion of interesting nuances about getting an education abroad.
For everyone who wants to learn modern information technology, I want to say: go for it and everything will work out! Just now, at Innopolis University, the selection for higher education programs has started - this is not only a master's program, but also a bachelor's degree. All the details are here . Hope to see you soon!
