She failed to break Apple security, now she works there | FIU News [Video]

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 …