Students enrolled in the Temple Upward Bound program engaged in a social engineering penetration testing exercise, under the premise that they were hired by the CARE Lab. Over the course of several sessions, we explored the world of social engineering — including ethics, OSINT, pretexting, personas, the role of AI, phishing, and vishing — culminating in a hands-on mini penetration test.
Our goal was to introduce high school students to cybersecurity through the human side of cybercrime: how attackers manipulate trust, how information is gathered and misused, and how we can defend against it. These students brought their curiosity, energy, and sharp thinking to every challenge.
