Steven Hart

IT/Interactive Media/ Graphic Design Intern        

Majors: Visual Arts and Computer Science

Expected Graduation: May 2013

I work about 20 hours/week in a small office in Baltimore with 3-5 coworkers.  For the most part, I alter/improve the functionality of the Distrophonix website, as well as create graphics and images for the site.  I also get to provide input about the user interface and design of the website and its development.

Benefits of Interning:

The benefits of working at this internship over the Summer was not only to stay busy and productive, but to also introduce myself to a corporate environment while learning more about my interests.

“I liked my internship a lot because the Shriver Center let me find a niche position for both my passions – programming and visual arts.  It was a casual environment where I could extend my programming skills as well as develop my portfolio.”

This fall, the Center for Women in Technology is piloting a mentoring program for new women entering the College of Engineering and Information Technology through its Affiliates Program. Forty-two returning students have volunteered to welcome new freshman and transfer students and assist with the transition into life as an engineering or IT major. New students can request a mentor through 9/10 and are encouraged to attend the Affiliates retreat on 9/10.

Four Peer Mentor Coordinators, Amy Chou (CENG; CWIT Scholar), Samurdhi Kalegana Koralage (MENG, CWIT Affiliate), Kelly LaFlamme (CSEE, CWIT Affiliate) and Aasam Tasaddaq (CWIT Scholar, MENG), will continue to work with the mentors as the semster begins. All mentors are required to attend training on Thursday evening, Sept. 8th, from 7:30-9pm in ITE 456.

click on the image to go to the Hurricane Irene tracker

Google's Crisis Response team has a Hurricane Irene tracker that overlays Google maps. The application shows the hurricane path along with several additional, customizable layers of data: weather radar, cloud imagery, storm surge probabilities. evacuation routes and shelter sites.

A new Google technical report, Trends in Circumventing Web-Malware Detection documents that it has become difficult to identify malicious Web sites as antivirus software is becoming less effective against them. The researchers analyzed four years' worth of data from 160 million Web pages using its Safe Browsing service, which warns users when they attempt to visit a site thought to have malware. Attackers have developed evasion techniques to avoid having their sites flagged as malicious. ACM TechNews notes that

"One of the ways hackers get around virtual machine-based detection is to require the victim to perform a mouse click, which triggers the site to automatically execute an attack. Browser emulators can malfunction when the malicious code is scrambled. A new, more complex JavaScript code is designed to stop emulated browsers and make manual analysis of the code more difficult, according to the Google engineers. Google also has come across IP cloaking, where a malicious Web site will refuse to serve harmful content to specific IP ranges, especially those used by security researchers. In August 2009, Google found that about 200,000 sites were using IP cloaking."

See also an article on NetworkWorld.