“If a child can do it, then a regular hacker can do it, which it’ll super easy for a regular hacker to do it, so I just want everybody to be aware that be more careful when you download games and stuff like that.” ~ Reuben Paul, CEO, Prudent Games
He is a hacker, an app-developer, the first Shaolin-do Kung Fu Black Belt in the United States, the CEO of a company and also just nine years old. Reuben Paul, a boy of 4’5”, has taken the internet by storm by possessing great cyber security skills that even experts in their 30’s wouldn’t be able to show.
The moment we think of hacking we are taken back to the movies like, The Matrix, Live Free or Die Hard and so on, with cool guys in their youth who bring down the entire system. Well, in the real world, all this is being done by this little boy of just about 55 pounds.
In the month of February this year, at a Cyber-Security Conference held in Texas, Reuben demonstrated how easy it is for one to hack into somebody’s Android cellphone, wipe its contacts and logs, stream videos and ascertain the location of the user. And all of this can be done simply by putting in a venomous code.
Another achievement that he has to his name is that of being the youngest member ever present at the Ground Zero Summit 2015 which is one of the most prestigious events about information security in the world! Although he had been present at the Summit the year before as well, as a keynote speaker, this time he occupied the eminent position of Special Ambassador.
Reuben Paul, as a budding cyber spy, is highly tensed about the lenient attitude and ignorance people have about the security of their virtual data. “We live in a world with new technology and millions of apps which kids like me use. We need to teach kids to use it carefully and securely, because, right now schools don’t teach it.” Therefore he, with his father Mano Paul, CEO of SecuRisk Solutions, are working on building a curriculum that can prevent this fatal issue.
He has already made a vital contribution to making the curriculum less stressful for the kids when, in second grade, he developed an app called Shuriken Math that teaches children mathematical problems in an easy and fun manner. Upon the insistence from his school, this game has now even been published on Apple’s App Store.
Other than Reuben, there have been some other kids as well who have shown astonishing cyber skills like Britain’s Betsy Davies, the famous CyFi from California, etc.
In the digital age where our day begins and ends at the touch of technology it is a welcome sight to see young and bright kids like Reuben taking hold of the security aspect as well. It is a field that is usually either forgotten or is highly complicated for simply anybody to enter and direct.
Therefore, it is great to see that we have such unique minds in our presence that are nothing less than ‘gifted’, striving to protect us from the demons of the ever-expanding virtual domain.