Teenagers crack encrypted files

A teenage duo from Nayland College cracked encrypted files and traced a hacker’s steps to prove they could match industry professionals and tertiary students in a nationwide competition.

Ivan Shabashev, a 14-year-old Year 10 student, and Fionn Cassidy, a 16-year-old Year 12 student, won the high school category of one round in the New Zealand Cyber Security Competition and second place across all categories that included industry professionals and tertiary students.

The annual, multi-round competition delves into cyber security technologies such as cryptography, steganography, digital forensic science, incident response and more.

Seven Nayland College students competed individually in the initial online competition and were in the qualifying 20 per cent of 400 competitors to reach the next two rounds at the University of Waikato. Only Ivan and Fionn were able to head to Hamilton for those team rounds, where they joined forced to compete in a round focused on incident response and another round of multiple cyber security technologies.

One of the challenges the duo faced involved cracking encrypted files and monitoring WiFi traffic, while another required them to view security logs to trace a hacker’s steps.

Ivan’s father, Dmitrii Shabashev, says the pair became mates when they joined the electronic devices club at school, where they repair broken computers. An interest in technology goes way back for both of them and Ivan was interested in programming as an eight-year-old and now knows several programming languages. He also knows two human languages as the family moved to New Zealand from Russia six years ago.

The pairs’ success at the national competition was a huge achievement, but Dmitrii says it was the networking and meeting others with the same passion for technology that really inspired them.

“That participation itself was more important than winning for them because they gained many connections of like-minded people. They were building network opportunities and participating in real-world events. It gave them an awareness of what is going on in the industry and feeling a part of it.”