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Girl Scouts will now earn badges in cybersecurity and it's totally awesome.

What's next for the Girl Scouts? Oh, you know, defeating hackers. No biggie.

Five fearless girls in New York City this March. Photo from Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

The 105-year-old, 1.8 million-scout-strong organization announced that, in addition to badges for public speaking, first aid, mechanics (and, yes, selling cookies), young scouts can now expect to earn laurels for cybersecurity as well.

The announcement is part of a team-up between the Girl Scouts and cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks. Led by an expert panel, the groups will be rolling out the first in a series of 18 different badges in September 2018.

"It is our hope that our collaboration will serve to cultivate our troops’ budding interest in cybersecurity," said Girl Scouts CEO Sylvia Acevedo in a press release.

The Girl Scouts say the exact curriculum's still being decided, but the topics would build on each other and could touch on areas such as protecting privacy, combating cyberbullying, and more high-level skills like data manipulation.

Today's girls are growing up in a world where cyber smarts are just as important as street smarts.

Smartphones, smart watches, smart televisions — heck, we even have smart clothes!

[rebelmouse-image 19527440 dam="1" original_size="750x500" caption=""Activate jet pack... ACTIVATE JET PACK! God, these things." Photo from Michele Tantussi/Getty Images." expand=1]"Activate jet pack... ACTIVATE JET PACK! God, these things." Photo from Michele Tantussi/Getty Images.

Combine that with social media and it's astounding how much information each of us is uploading every single day. Knowing how to keep your information safe is becoming a necessary life skill.

This is also about showing the girls how to take cybersecurity by the horns and make it work for them.

Women are seriously underrepresented in many STEM industries, including cybersecurity. One report found they made up just 11% of cybersecurity jobs. But we're going to need them. Forbes wrote that in 2016 there were over 200,000 unfilled cybersecurity roles in the United States, and there seems to be no end to the recent data leaks and security concerns.

One possible reason for this gender gap, and the gender gap in many STEM fields, might be the "broken pipeline" problem — a lack of mentors and female role models, combined with gender stereotypes, could discourage even very young girls from exploring STEM subjects.

"A woman's interest in STEM-related fields happens when she is a young girl, playing with games and toys, developing her creativity, and using her imagination," said Acevedo in an email.

By connecting with young girls and showing them that, yes, you can do this, the Girl Scouts might be able to help patch the pipeline.

Girl Scouts have already run accessible summer camps, created vaccination kits, and written legislation to stop child marriage (which, by God, if that scout didn't get a badge for that, she should have). It's cool to see them out to fix the internet as well.

From Your Site Articles

Heroes

This 11-year-old wants you to know how vulnerable your electronic devices are.

True

When 11-year-old Reuben Paul took the stage at the International One Conference, the audience didn't know what was in store for them.

In front of the fascinated audience, Reuben proceeded to hack his teddy bear.

[rebelmouse-image 19530296 dam="1" original_size="1373x702" caption="Image via AFP/YouTube." expand=1]Image via AFP/YouTube.

The teddy bear Reuben hacked, which he named BOB (standing for Bear-of-Breaches), is no ordinary teddy bear: It can receive and send messages via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. By plugging a small computer called a Raspberry Pi into his laptop, Reuben was able to remotely control the bear — turning on its light and even its microphone.

"By turning on the microphone and leaving the light off, the teddy bear essentially became a spying device as I could record the conversation in the room," Reuben writes in an email.

"Theoretically I could stand outside someone's house and if the toy is in range, connect to any internet-connected devices ... and spy on them by recording everything that they are saying."

Sounds kind of terrifying, right?

Reuben doesn't regularly hack teddy bears, but he does try to spread the word about how easy it is to weaponize seemingly innocuous items.

Image via Mano Paul, used with permission.

Reuben's dad told The Guardian that Reuben's cyber skills started to show at age 6 when his dad explained how a smartphone game worked — and then Reuben realized that it used the same kind of logic as Angry Birds. He later learned how to hack a toy car.

When he was invited to speak at the conference in The Hague, Netherlands, the fifth-grader says he wanted to do something cool and unique. So with the help of his dad, Mano Paul (a cybersecurity expert), Reuben "researched the security of the teddy bear and found the insecurity."

Image via Mano Paul, used with permission.

His demonstration got quite the reception.

"I went to Hague to share my research and experiences and did not expect any press," writes Reuben. "But when the local RTL news and Agence France-Presse reported the news and people all over the world came to hear of the dangers of insecure [internet-connected] devices, it felt good to have raised awareness."

Reuben's goal is to get across an important message: To keep our kids safe, we need to be aware of the vulnerabilities of internet-connected devices.

Says Reuben: "In my generation, internet connected devices are making it into kids game room and my 5 year old little brother Ittai and I have a few of them. I wanted to make sure that they are safe for kids (like my brother) to use."

He notes that any internet-connected device can be weaponized if it’s "hackable" — i.e., if it doesn't have the right security defenses or they're not working properly.

He offers some tips for how to protect yourself online:

1. Read up and be more aware of security threats.

2. Don't connect to access points that are public or that you don't know.

3. Check the privacy and location services settings on your devices (tablets, phones, etc.) and turn them off if you don't need them.

4. Don't talk. Don't take. Don't trust.

As in, don't give out personal information on social media; don't accept anything from someone you don't know ("because there is no free lunch in the real or the cyber world"); and don't trust anyone on the internet, as they are "cyber strangers."

5. Use strong passwords (and don't have a common password).

6. Connect to websites over secure channels.

7. Patch your systems with the latest security updates.

As for his plans, Reuben has a full slate this summer.

He has received inquiries from kids and their parents wanting to know more about cybersecurity, so with the help of his parents, he started CyberShaolin, a nonprofit that aims to "educate, equip, and empower kids and adults with the dangers and defenses of cybersecurity." They make videos that are understandable for kids and adults alike, and he plans to work on more during the summer.

He has also already received a number of invitations to keynote conferences around the world (including in Singapore, Poland, and Prague). And he wants to learn programming.

But don't worry — he's also got some "me time" planned. "Over summer," he writes, "I plan to play a lot of video games with my brother, read books and just relax."

Brothers Reuben and Ittai. Image via Mano Paul, used with permission.

As for his long-term goals? Reuben says he wants to use his cybersecurity knowledge and skills "for the good of humanity." His ideal job is as a businessman by day, making video games and apps, and a "cyber spy"by night, helping protect the country from cyber threats. He'd also like to become an Olympic gymnast.

He adds, practically, "I don't know if these will become realities, but for now, I am just going to take it one step at a time."

The must-pass piece of legislation has some tricks up its sleeve.

Congress passed House Speaker Paul Ryan's $1.1 trillion government spending bill on Friday.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

The 2,000 page bill, known as "the omnibus," was a massive undertaking that will fund the government through most of 2016, and it comes just in time to prevent a government shutdown. It took a lot of work and a lot of compromise to pull together, and the good news is, there's actually some pretty cool stuff in there.

Like, NASA getting more funding, for one.

After NASA's funding was famously slashed to a paltry $17 billion in 2013, this time around, the government has set aside over $19 billion for the organization to further develop its exploration programs.

The omnibus also includes new, extended health care coverage guarantees for 9/11 first responders, which former "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart has been campaigning for.

There's also some money for the upcoming census and the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, aka CISA, which is ... wait, what's that?

Oh that's right.

The controversial government surveillance bill known as CISA has been tactfully snuck in.

Those congressional rascals.

The full text of the CISA, which passed the Senate in October, apparently appears 1,729 pages into the omnibus spending bill. Meaning it is now one giant step closer to the president's desk.

So what exactly is CISA?

Officially, it aims to "improve cybersecurity in the United States through enhanced sharing of information about cybersecurity threats, and for other purposes."

Essentially, it would allow the government to access Internet traffic information from companies without a warrant.

It's been hugely controversial since it was first introduced in 2014. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) called it "a surveillance bill by another name," and many others have touted it as a bill that invades the privacy of Americans for somewhat vague security reasons.

Sen. Ron Wyden, a notable CISA critic. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

The version in the omnibus is even worse than the original.

Key provisions that prevented direct information sharing with the National Security Agency have been stripped out, and limitations that say the information can only be used for cybersecurity purposes have been removed.

As Evan Greer, director of the activist group Fight for the Future said, "It's clear now that this bill was never intended to prevent cyber attacks."

Due to controversy and criticism, the bill has had a pretty hard time moving ahead so far. Despite passing the Senate earlier this year, tech firms like Apple, Twitter, and Reddit and organizations like The Business Software Alliance and the Computer and Communications Industry Association have all openly opposed it.

Even the Department of Homeland Security, aka the government agency that'd actually be the ones receiving all that Internet data stated in July that CISA could overwhelm the agency with data of "dubious value" while also sweeping away privacy protections.

So how could something like CISA become law?

Good question, me.

The answer is pretty simple. The omnibus spending bill was a must-pass piece of legislation.

It covers almost the entire 2016 spending plan for the federal government and needed to be passed to prevent a government shutdown. Which no one wanted right before the end of the year.

Rep. Paul Ryan (center) with President Obama and Sen. Mitch McConnell. Photo by Aude Guerrucci-Pool/Getty Images.

So by tucking CISA into the end of the omnibus, lawmakers were able to push it through with little chance of debate. It's pretty darn sneaky. Especially since the bill comes packed with other, positive funding decisions that will get held up or even lost if the spending bill continued to be delayed.

Congress has done this before; it's actually a disturbingly common practice.

Only a year ago, Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kansas) quietly attached a provision to the 2015 funding law that would allow U.S. taxpayers to fund bailouts for banks that trade risky derivatives. You know, the kind that crashed the economy in 2008.

That bill was also passed to prevent a government shutdown.

Rep. Kevin Yoder (center) in Washington. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

There are countless other examples, and if this sounds to you like it should be illegal, well, you're not alone. Unfortunately, the bill to make it illegal would probably have a "Punch Orphans in the Face Act" or something equally horrible attached to it.

The good news is, now that the bill has passed Congress — and was signed by President Obama — NASA will be getting the best funding it's had in years. There's even $175 million set for NASA researches to explore Jupiter's moon Europa. Which, if you haven't heard, is REALLY COOL.

And, hey, since the government is going to be surveilling your Internet, why not encourage them to keep funding the cool stuff? Google the phrase "NASA is awesome" as many times as you can. They'll get the message, I'm sure.