Recognizing that she needed to enhance both her technical skills and confidence, Acosta enrolled at FIU’s Knight School of Computing and Information Sciences in the College of Engineering and Computing. It was a game-changing decision.
Inspired by the impenetrability of the tech giant’s devices while participating in a hacking challenge, Paulina Acosta planned her future. Now, after her FIU journey, she is an Apple engineer.
Paulina Acosta ’22 sat down in an FIU lab one day with a challenge from her professor: Hack into Apple’s smart home ecosystem.
“Apple Home” is a platform that allows iPhones, iPads and other Apple devices to communicate with smart lights, air conditioning controls, cameras and other gadgets around a home, giving a person complete control of their habitat in one place. Professor Selcuk Uluagac laid out every smart light bulb, garage door control and power outlet imaginable to give Acosta the best chance at intercepting communications between the various electronics so that she might hack into a device to understand its vulnerabilities and potentially help correct them.
She couldn’t crack a single thing.
Instead of frustration, Acosta felt admiration—and found her career calling.
“The communications were so thoroughly and impressively obscure, it felt like I was looking at nonsense,” Acosta recalls. “It made me really appreciate the cybersecurity measures this company takes.”
Today, Acosta works as an Apple engineer, programming the software that connects iPhones and AirTags. Her journey from aspiring tech professional to Apple engineer was far from straightforward.
Read more at FIU News.
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