Cybertraps Podcast

Welcome to the Cyber Traps podcast.

I'm Jethro Jones, your host.

Today I have Aiden McKay with me, and Aiden.

Why don't you introduce yourself and say hello.

Hi, I am Aiden McKay and I think I'll leave it at that.

So, are you a student at EWU?

I am an EWU alumni.

I graduated class of 2022 before going off on some personal adventures for my church before trying to get back into the

I didn't realize that you graduated before you left.

Okay, good.

What'd you graduate in?

I graduated with a Bachelor's of Science with emphasis in computer science.

Okay, good.

And so you're here at the Inch 360 conference and what brought you here today?

Well, firstly, I used to work under Drip seven, one of the main hosts, and so I was aware of it in that way and thought that it wouldn't hurt to show up just with my familiarity.

I'm also kind of looking for jobs at the moment, so I thought it might be a good opportunity to look at some of what the industry is talking about and also to maybe network, should there be potentials out there.

Yeah.

Excellent.

Well, and there definitely are people who are hiring and looking for folks so.

We got a lot of sponsors here who you may be able to find some sort of connection and it's always better as you're looking for a job to know someone in the company than to not know someone.

So that's good.

So what are you hoping to get out of today?

Beyond just getting an idea of what's happening in the cybersecurity space?

honestly, I was kind of leaving that up to exploration.

Yeah.

I didn't have a ton of familiarity with Inch 360, so I looked over the agenda somewhat and there were some interesting topics, but I was kind of just going to see what could be there.

Yeah.

So, you probably only had one session so far 'cause we're still early in the day, but what have you taken away from that one?

I found it interesting the way that a lot of cybersecurity, at least the way they've been talking about it in it so far, is focused on interacting socially with your team and other members of the business.

Because we obviously, as people in the industry understand the various risks associated with cybersecurity threats.

But not everybody else does.

And so it seems that there's a lot more in cybersecurity focused around how to properly convey those things to your coworkers rather than necessarily just the resolving of the issues themselves.

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that.

And resolving the issues is usually a technical problem.

Preventing the issues is usually a personal problem.

And interacting with people and helping them understand how they can take a role in preventing it is an important thing.

Once there is an instant or whatever, there's usually a technical solution to that to resolve it.

And but getting to that point is usually a person in some way involved that.

That, that made it possible for that to happen in the first place.

So understanding the dynamic of those two is, is good.

Alright.

My last question is, you have a bachelor's in computer science.

What was your focus and emphasis and what would you be doing if you had your dream job today?

Well

There

is this one specific South Korean game development studio that I would really like to work for, but that one is very much on the pipe dream side of things.

So mostly I'm actually just looking into software development in general.

I enjoy the act of coding and I just happen to interact with cybersecurity in the process.

So.

If anything in cybersecurity, I'd probably end up more towards pen testing and stuff like that.

But I do want to go into software development primarily.

Gotcha.

And so one more question, sorry.

What is your thought on the AI tools that are available in helping you develop?

I have very mixed feelings about ai.

Having worked with computers for my degree.

I've kind of figured out how much I don't really trust them in a lot of

ways, Uhhuh,

When you see the step-by-step process going from binary into assembly, into the mid-level languages, into the upper level languages, you realize how many layers that even a simple sort of
program has to go through, and you start understanding why your computer will sometimes do things that don't make sense, like why would it react this way when I gave it this instruction?

That's because it probably got lost somewhere in all those layers, and then you're taking an AI model.

It is trying to process language, which already is something that's an entire field of study on its own, and then you're backtracking through those layers and you wonder why people talk about things like the AI hallucinating.

And so I think has a lot of potential due to its very honestly pretty accurate and rapid summaries and analyses of large data pools in a way that's understandable to like the average person.

Yeah.

But I think that if you try to be too accurate and too precise or interact with something that's too niche, it starts getting a bit more dangerous.

yeah, the way that I explain it is AI can do anything, but it can't do a very specific thing very well.

And so if you just like, it's very good for the flash in the pan demo.

Like, Hey, check out what this can do.

It can write a whole essay for you.

It can write a program for you and it does that and it looks good.

But if you look under the hood or behind the curtain as it were, then it falls apart pretty quickly.

I once had a program that I just ran through an AI quickly just 'cause I wanted to quickly have it get checked for stuff and I had to spend five iterations of responding to it, telling it that, no, this is not an infinite loop.

I know my code well enough.

This is not an infinite loop.

That's funny.

So what have you been working on lately?

Lately I've mostly just been working on a personal modding project for a game because again, that is kind of where my interests lie.

While I've been trying to find jobs, the job market has not exactly been kind of late, especially with how AI is interacting with entry level software

development.

Yes.

Yeah.

And so I've been finding things to fill my time with while I still hunt for jobs.

Yeah.

And modding a game.

That sounds like some pretty cool stuff too.

Okay, well thank you Aiden.

I appreciate you being here and thanks for taking the time to be on the Cyber TRS Podcast.

Thank you for inviting me.