About this study
“Hacks” is a free, 4-lesson study at novice, created with soclever, a personal AI teacher. Each lesson takes a few minutes and ends with a check-in question; finish the curriculum and you can take a certificate test to earn a diploma. Starting is free once you sign in — or generate your own study on any topic.
What you'll learn
- What Is a Hack?. The word "hack" started with telephone engineers in the 1950s who discovered clever, unintended ways to route calls and explore the phone network—not to steal, but out of sheer…
- Security Hacks and Cyber Attacks. The first major computer worm, called the Morris Worm, spread across the internet in 1988 and crashed thousands of machines. A graduate student released it to test network…
- Threat Modeling and Attack Vectors. You've just noticed someone left a sticky note with a password on the desk next to an unlocked computer. That's not a technical flaw—it's a human one, and it's exactly the kind of…
Questions this study answers
- What is the main difference between a programming hack and a security hack?
- What's the difference between phishing and malware, and why would an attacker use one instead of the other?
- If you were protecting a company's customer database, what's one realistic attack vector you'd want to identify and defend against?
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