Cybersecurity Gamification

The modeling and simulation provides users with the interactive tools normally as a software for understanding of the complex system. By interacting with the computer models (the software), users can obtain concrete knowledge of the real complex system. The gamification can also provide the tools for interaction with the targets. There are lots of cybersecurity concepts which are not easy  to understand just by listening to the lecture or explanation. Through the interaction with tools and other participants, students can realize the real meaning of the complex concepts. 

Since 2014, John and his students have been developing cyber security unplugged games. John has been teaching middle school and high school students using various materials related to cyber security education. In the beginning he started teaching students using cipher disk for understanding of Caesar cipher. 

At the end of 2015, John and his students developed the first unplugged cyber security education game which is named "Defend the line". It consists of quiz cards for testing the common sense related to cybersecurity. The students who got the high score have the high chance to win for the continuing dice game. 

Every year since 2015, John and his students released new unplugged board games for educating middle school and high school students. One of the remarkable games is "Where is the Adleman?" for understanding the RSA encryption algorithm. In that game, students are competing against one another by calculating a small prime number for RSA encryption and decryption. The winner gets the Adleman chip. Another remarkable game which was developed in 2015 is "Mishmesh Password". Each player sets their own password and they are competing with the opposite player. There are cards which contain messages for manipulating the passwords. Players are flipping a card from the shuffled card deck and following the manipulating direction. At the end of the game, both passwords are scored with a scoring standard and the owner of the high scored password becomes the winner.   

In the ICSSA 2018 conference, John and his students presented these two games in front of students from Penn State Univ. and St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences.