Program highlights

How she hacked her way right to an ‘A’

By Samantha Herndon

Informatics students know how to work hard and earn high grades. One student, Marie O’Connell, found another way to ensure that she earned an A: by hacking her professor.

Andrew Reifers, an associate teaching professor at the iSchool, offers students a unique opportunity in his INFO 415: Emerging Topics in Information Assurance and Cybersecurity course.

“If one of you can hack me successfully, you get an A in my class,” he tells students on the first day.

An Informatics and French double major, O’Connell decided to take Reifers up on the challenge during spring quarter. Reifers has a reputation as an engaging lecturer and a cybersecurity expert, yet even the experts can sometimes be hacked.

It was the first successful hacking attempt in his three years of teaching the course.

With inspiration from lectures and from listening to almost every episode of the “Darknet Diaries” podcast, O’Connell decided to try her hand at a spear-phishing attack.

Unlike broad phishing attempts, which target many potential victims at once, spear-phishing attempts depend on familiarity. They often use a pretext, a scenario that a hacker can use to engage their target.

In O’Connell’s case, a casual conversation with Reifers about her involvement in the UW Blockchain Society led to his request for more information — a perfect pretext.

“We were having a conversation about blockchain technologies,” said Reifers. “She invited me to check out the student organization she’s part of and then followed up with an email. It seemed very natural. I was fully expecting the email. In no way was there any indication that this was going to be a spear-phishing attempt.”

O’Connell’s previous study of web design was pivotal. She crafted a page that mimicked the University’s sign-on page. But a masked link directed to a page that harvested Reifers’ credentials.

“She got me,” Reifers said. “I was impressed with how seamless (the hack) was. It transitioned from a social engineering attack to a digital attack in a very professional manner.”

The hack was considered an ethical one, without repercussions besides a slight boost in grade. O’Connell did not access or save any protected data, and Reifers’ two-factor authentication prevented her from seeing his password or files.

After taking Reifers’ class, O’Connell sees more connections in what she has learned in Informatics.

“I’m really happy that I went out of my comfort zone and took a class that I knew nothing about,” O’Connell said. “I would like to get into cybersecurity, and I see this as a foot in the door.”

Reifers expressed pride in his student. “I hope that she continues investigating cybersecurity as a potential career. I think she’d be an excellent engineer.”

Marie O’Connell let her professor, Andrew Reifers, know she’d hacked him by routing him to the joke landing page above.

Alumni spotlight: Prem Kumar, 2006

NOW: CEO, HUMANLY.IO “The inclusive design practices of Humanly .io, the company I founded in 2019, helped us win GeekWire’s 2022 UX Design of the Year award . By building a product that allows our customers to measure how empathetic employees are towards candidates and if affinity bias exists, we have made candidate screening conversations and interviews more equitable and inclusive . My Informatics degree has provided a great foundation for DEI and has been a huge competitive advantage in my career . ”

Pronoun tool will put power in users’ hands

By Shanzay Shabi

Members of the University of Washington community lack a tool to declare their pronouns in directory listings, but soon they will have one. Master of Library and Information Science alum Lauren Manes is helping make it happen through her work on a new pronoun tool.

Manes is a user experience designer at the UW and the primary designer on the pronoun tool project. The pronoun tool, a project started by Identity and Access Management, will be a designated space within the centralized UW system where anyone with a UW NetID can declare any and all or no pronouns. This information will then be consumed by various other systems around the university, such as class rosters. The tool is expected to be rolled out this academic year.

“This tool is necessary to support the UW community in representing their whole selves and to communicate to other members of the community how they want to be addressed,” said Manes, MLIS ’05.

Discussions about the need for a pronoun tool began about six years ago when Manes increasingly became involved with diversity, equity and inclusion work within UW-IT. While working with Identity and Access Management on a widget to allow UW students to set a preferred name that’s distinct from their legal name, Manes and others realized there was a need for a similar tool specific to pronouns.

Helen B. Garrett, university registrar and chief officer of Enrollment Information Services at the UW, is one of the leading advocates for identity expression across UW systems. Having worked closely alongside Manes on the pronoun tool, she said she admires Manes’ commitment to the idea that identity belongs solely to its holder.

“Lauren has been an amazing partner to have throughout this project,” Garrett said. “Lauren and I work so well together because as a UX designer she emphasizes that behind each technological process and interaction is an individual person.”

It has taken years to compile research and design a tool that is both inclusive and accessible. In addition to designing the interface, Manes has led competitive analyses looking at the design of other interfaces where users set pronouns. She also did research on potential user populations for the pronoun tool and assessed their needs, then set out to create a tool that would accommodate those needs.

“To connect people with information, you have to understand the information deeply and you also have to understand what the people’s goals and motivations are for using that information,” said Manes.

Lauren Manes, a user experience designer at the UW, is working on a centralized tool to help people in the UW community specify pronouns for use in directory listings and other systems.

Alumni spotlight: Twanna Hodge, 2015

NOW: PH.D. STUDENT, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK “Along with furthering my education and starting my Ph .D . program at the University of Maryland, I am one of the seven ALA Spectrum Doctoral Fellows . In addition, I published three book chapters this year drawing from my experience and expertise in Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) efforts . Further continuation in leading and supporting EDI efforts in the profession through consultations, mentorship, research and service is an ongoing focus of my work as a facilitator, speaker, EDI consultant and author .

No sibling rivalry among this trio of iSchoolers

By Jessi Loerch

Locksley, Lynzley and McKaulay Kolakowski don’t have to go far when they need a study partner. The siblings, who live together in the Seattle area, are all working on degrees through the iSchool’s Master of Science in Information Management online mode. And, because they’re all pursuing the same specialization — Program/Product Management and Consulting — they’re also in all the same classes.

McKaulay, who is the eldest sibling, was the first to join the iSchool when he was accepted to the Informatics program. Lynzley and Locksley, who are twins, followed him a few years later. They all got jobs after graduating with Informatics degrees.

McKaulay worked for a couple years before returning for his MSIM. Locksley and Lynzley jumped right into the graduate program. The siblings started the program in 2021.

They agree it’s been a positive for them to all be working through the same program — even if it’s sometimes been a bit surprising for their fellow students.

“Sometimes people seem a little intimidated when they realize we all have the same last name,” Lynzley said. “It’s been a good experience. We get to work together, but we also get to meet other people. We get to discuss our different experiences, and it’s really easy to stay connected between our different classes. We’re a little team working together even if we’re not always on the same group project.”

Locksley said all three have been impressed by their instructors. “The professors have been the coolest, most interesting and accomplished professors we’ve ever had,” she said.

“Plus one to the teachers and the people,” Lynzley said. “I met a person who used to be a surgeon and now she’s doing this. We meet all these different people from different walks of life and we get to work with them and discuss with them and it’s been great.”

The siblings, who will finish up their studies in December, are already applying what they’ve learned to their work.

Lynzley said she’s been sharing what she learned in the iSchool with her coworkers at Avanade. She suspects that the skills she’s gained from studying at the iSchool helped her to get promoted sooner than she’d been expecting.

Locksley, who had been working at Accenture until recently, hadn’t been planning to look for a new position until she graduated, but a perfect role opened up, and she was excited to get hired. She started in late August with Major League Hacking. She’s a program manager, working with academic developers and helping them discover the variety of technologies that are out there to help them do their work.

“The interview team was really impressed with the MSIM,” she said. “What I learned at Accenture and through the MSIM is what prepared me for this role.”

McKaulay, who works for Amazon Web Services, says he is putting what he’s learned to use. While he’s not looking to change positions anytime soon, he’s been able to show his managers the skills he’s developing in project management, and he’s keeping the doors open.

He’s also grateful for how the setup and flexibility of the program allowed all of them to study together.

“We all appreciate how unique this situation was — that we were all able to take this at the same time,” he said. “We recognize it’s a rare opportunity for siblings to all go down the same path.”

Siblings (from left) Locksley, McKaulay, and Lynzley Kolakowski all got Informatics degrees from the iSchool, and now all three are pursuing master’s degrees through the MSIM’s online mode.

Alumni spotlight: Ashley Varma, INFO 2020, MSIM 2022

NOW: PROGRAM ANALYST, NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER “I support NASA’s human exploration programs with expertise in exploration mission planning, systems development and integration, as well as program cost, schedule and risk assessments . I am a proud contributor to the Artemis generation with its first mission launching this fall! In addition, I have advanced the work of the Johnson Space Center by developing data visualizations, creating Gateway schedule performance metrics and assisting the Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility mission . ”

Can a game teach people to spot misinformation?

By Jessi Loerch

Misinformation is everywhere, and it gets more sophisticated all the time: doctored photos, made-up news stories, fake videos. What people believe drives how they act, and this misinformation has real-world, sometimes dangerous, effects. iSchool students are helping tackle this problem while gaining experience in running and interpreting research projects.

Yeonhee (Johnny) Cho and Lidia Morris, who are both earning doctorates in Information Science, are working on misinformation escape rooms — games in which players work together to solve a series of puzzles. The escape rooms are a project from the Center for an Informed Public, in partnership with the Technology & Social Change Group, GAMER Research Group and Puzzle Break.

Misinformation is extremely hard to combat, and the researchers are attempting to understand whether game-based learning can help people recognize misinformation tactics.

“I believe that games have power as a medium to teach and guide people in a different way,” Cho said. “It’s not just a fun way to teach people. It engages people and participation increases people’s motivation.”

Cho helped with a participatory design process to create the game. In “The Euphorigen Investigation,” the first escape room game created for the project, players imagine themselves as journalists and collaborate to figure out whether a company is selling a dangerous product.

The game can be played online or in person. The goal is to get people talking and thinking about misinformation and help them spot it in the future.

He explains that people often think that only other people get tricked — that they themselves are somehow immune. But the game shows anyone can be susceptible.

Morris joined the project after “The Euphorigen Investigation” had already been built. She and Cho both worked with directed research groups (DRG), which gave students a chance to participate in the research. Cho and Morris helped lead the DRG, which analyzed results from test players and looked for ways to adapt or improve the game.

“Misinformation is not a topic, it’s a tactic,” Morris said. “It is way of spreading false information in a way that makes it seem true. … Misinformation is scary. It can harm everybody and anybody. We need to inform people of it and we need to give them these tools to combat it.”

Morris also worked with Jin Ha Lee, an iSchool associate professor who is the director of the UW Game Research (GAMER) Group, on a variation of the game for ARMY, the BTS fandom.

Chris Coward, a senior principal research scientist at the iSchool and a co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public, said the earlier work has built a foundation for new projects, including combating cancer-nutrition misinformation, as well as misinformation directed at the Black community.

Coward said Ph.D. students are a vital part of work like this. It’s good for the students and it’s good for the research.

“It gives students a lot of hands-on experience working with more senior researchers,” he said. “It exposes students to different questions, approaches and methods so that they are better equipped to embark on their own research careers.”

Ph.D. students Yeonhee (Johnny) Cho and Lidia Morris are assisting with research into whether escape rooms — collaborative puzzle-based games — can help people recognize misinformation tactics.

Alumni spotlight: Marisa Duarte, 2013

NOW: ASSOCIATE PROF., ARIZONA STATE UNIV. SCHOOL OF SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION “I recently became a member of the Scholars Council for Data & Society . Founded in 2022, the Scholars Council supports D&S Fellows and researchers working across issues of social change, equity, and digital life . Alongside my own work on rural and tribal digital divides, I mentor doctoral students investigating how social change relates to topics such as internet, roads and energy deployments in Indian Country; Indigenous social media engagement; and digital Black femme and queer self-expressions .