Due to events that happened this week, which I will talk about later, I did not really get too involved in my research until this Friday (that being the day this is posted) due to time constraints for both me and my mentor (no longer on-site). We met today to talk about about the future of my research and my work with him. You all know what the research is; however, after our long meeting we have finally landed on a solid starting point. No longer will I be working on the internet presence of Fighter Base specifically (I will still update you all if you want to know about its progress). Instead, I will be tinkering with a software called WordPress. Essentially this is one of many means to create your own website, and, with the use of Pantheon, a website management platform, I will be able to test a false website created by me through security plug-ins which will allow me to imitate what goes on on any website when you perform certain tasks such as signing up for a subscription through your Facebook account. All of this will allow me to gain the necessary knowledge I need to help you, an average consumer, make the correct the judgement call when faced with a risky situation online. I hope this all makes sense. I would have been doing a very similar thing with Fighter Base, but this gives me more freedom to test more theories. As a side note, I did get to test the game in all it's virtual reality goodness which is pretty exciting considering it was my first time ever using virtual reality.
Alright, so I bet a few of you are still wondering what made my week so interesting. It was just this past weekend that I was flown out to Maryland by myself to take some tests at the NSA headquarters. That's right, you read that correctly. I would have taken pictures, but this being the NSA and all, I couldn't exactly just bring my phone in and take a picture, so you'll have to just imagine what it looked like. That's not true, I do have a few pictures, but it's just some very bland trees outside my hotel room.
Anyways, I am an applicant for their summer internship where I will doing... Stuff (they haven't exactly told me yet since I don't have my security clearance). But, what was most exciting was the polygraph test I had taken. Now I can't tell you what questions they asked me nor how the polygraph works. You may be thinking to yourself: Isn't this just a lie-detector? Yes and no. It is much harder to tell the truth than you think it is. For example, there was a question that I was obviously telling the truth on -- for simplicity's sake, let's say it was murder (something I obviously haven't done)-- it still spiked. I'll leave it up to you to figure out why it would spike. I will be flying out again in the near future to take some more tests which is absolutely exciting for me. Now do you understand why this was one of the most exciting weeks of my life? Pretty cool stuff don't you think? If you have any questions, include them in your comments below and I will reply as soon as possible. Thanks for tuning in this week.
