Hydroficient Externship via Extern
Senior pursuing a CS bachelor's, completing an IoT cyber defense externship at Hydroficient while building practical security and development experience.
Portfolio items include coursework, projects, and deliverables from the Hydroficient IoT Cyber Defense externship, focused on IoT security practices and applied development.
Developed a C++ cryptanalysis tool to decrypt a 646-character substitution cipher using statistical frequency analysis. Engineered a 6-class object-oriented application that recovered 100% of the original plaintext without the encryption key.
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Hydroficient · ✅ Verified by Extern · ⏱️ In progress
Build, hack, and defend real IoT infrastructure, then hand your security playbook to an actual company. You’ll launch realistic cyberattacks, from spoofing and replay attacks to unauthorized shutoffs, and implement defenses like TLS and mTLS.
Senior pursuing a CS bachelor's, completing an IoT cyber defense externship at Hydroficient while building practical security and development experience.
I am Maria S, a senior studying Computer Science at CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice. I have some work experience and I'm completing the Hydroficient IoT Cyber Defense externship while finishing my bachelor's degree.
Externships
Hydroficient IoT Cyber Defense Externship
In progress
Experience
Cybersecurity Researcher 6 Agentic AI & LLMs
John Jay College of Criminal Justice · December 2025 6 Present
Industry Immersion Experience, Technology and AI
Career Learning Lab, John Jay College · February 2026 6 May 2026
Founder
Tuxedo Paw Animal Rescue · January 2024 6 January 2025
Education
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY Manhattan, New York
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Information Security · Class of 2026
Skills
Developed a C++ cryptanalysis tool to decrypt a 646-character substitution cipher using statistical frequency analysis. Engineered a 6-class object-oriented application that recovered 100% of the original plaintext without the encryption key.
✅ Verified by Extern · ⏱️ In progress
Build, hack, and defend real IoT infrastructure, then hand your security playbook to an actual company. You’ll launch realistic cyberattacks, from spoofing and replay attacks to unauthorized shutoffs, and implement defenses like TLS and mTLS.
The externship involved working with an IoT deployment for a marina to evaluate its security posture. The work inspected device interactions, network topology, and service endpoints, then used that understanding to identify exposed components and inform follow-up attack and defense exercises.
I produced a formal threat-model PDF and a visual threat-model card based on a STRIDE analysis of the Grand Marina water-management system.
At Hydroficient I analyzed the Grand Marina water system, applied STRIDE to identify threats, made mitigation judgments, and delivered a formal threat-model PDF plus a visual threat-model card as the final deliverable.
During the Project 2 externship, I wrote a Python sensor log generator and published the runnable Colab notebook that simulates water-sensor readings with timestamps and counters for later analysis.
Situation: I needed to build an IoT pipeline and test its weaknesses. Task: construct a broker, publisher, and dashboard and capture traffic. Action: I ran Mosquitto, launched publisher and subscriber clients, intercepted messages with mosquitto_sub, and documented payloads. Result: I captured…
