First day walking into the classroom, I was intimidated by Mr. B’s up close and personal style of teaching but quickly realized how fun and engagement he can be to the class. The class is great, Mr. B is funny and the classmates are respectful, but something still sends chills to the back of my neck… the amount of work expected to be completed by the end of the semester. Nonetheless, Homework drills in the information taught in class, and the many assignments will serve as experiences to learn from, and eventually circle back as tools to reuse in the real world.

The first assignment was scary. Putting yourself out there for the world to see can feel vulnerable. Nonetheless, I couldn’t avoid this assignment forever so eventually I got it done; it helped me practice drafting and attention to audience. I had 3 drafts before I finally posted a paragraph that I had just felt ok about, I fixed dozens of grammar mistakes that could’ve made a terrible first impression, and the focus of the paragraph, from what I am to what I can offer to potential friends. This brings me to audience, I had to make sure I was spilling details about what do that could be relatable to my peers. Giving details on the games I play -how I spend my time- and future goals -how I plan to spend my future. I feel as if these are the most important details when getting to know a person because how they spend their time can give hints about their priorities and their personality. The introduction paragraph was a good insight to how this class would be, refining skills and using them with other people.

Next was the Resume and Cover letter, as a lazy unemployed, fresh out of high school student, I have very little experience about this subject so I was actually excited to learn from this assignment and extremely engaged about how to use this in the future. This assignment actually taught me in two ways. One, I realized the actually job position I would want to apply to in the near future and kind of qualifications, the job I want, requires. Before this assignment, I had actually treated my future position with lackadaisical attitude, thus never really developing a goal or standard of living that would meet those requirements by the time I am out of college, which leads me to point two. Two, drafting extensively so the resume highlights my skills as an individual. Of course this assignment helped me learn how to write directly to an employer/hiring manager and build a reflective resume, but I wanted to give unique and personal points of understandings that this assignment alone had given me. Overall, writing the Cover Letter and Resume for this class gives me an opportunity to see what this class has to offer, and writing for the audience and drafting multiple times.

The Third assignment of the class was the Lab Report. Did I enjoy this assignment? Yes; coding the dice roll simulation, turning 5 mins of rolling dice into an hour learning about how a computer determines random values, was actually a lot of fun. The rabbit hole of the rand( ) function and the bugs in my code was honestly worth the feeling of making a working application. In addition to making working code, it also made making the data sheet easier, as, instead of manually typing 300 separate values into individual cells, I just copied and pasted all of the data generated by my program. As for the assignment itself, I was given the opportunity to learn 3 key course objectives that would be useful throughout both the semester and my career. One, had already been discussed, becoming familiar with technology. I am confident learning how to code and using excel sheet would complete the requirements of this category. Two: information literacy, using CCNY’s library was… stressful, but after 5 hours of being insecure about the article I chose, I settled on an article that is relevant enough for me to pull a paragraph of information from. This was definitely the biggest struggle while doing this assignment, and this will be a running struggle throughout my assignments. Three: citation, when you have research, you have to cite them. In my Highschool I never had to cite sources, or write papers, so I have little to no experience with citing sources. In addition, with all the research I had to scour through, there was a lot of information I had to reread to be sure of its relevance to my research. To be honest, I am still unsure if I had cited the papers correctly, but I am hoping the website -and changes I made to what the website gave me- was up to the APA standard. The Lab report was a roller coaster of an assignment, with highs and lows, and just enough motivation to move on to the next assignment.

The Group Proposal, everyone’s favorite assignment. My group members and I were relatively on the same page. They worked at the same time as I did, and we collaborated and practiced the proposal nicely. As good group members would we divided the work evenly; I was in charge of the action plan. This was the most exciting part of the project as I was allowed to practice my ability to organize and place furniture on a plot of land, and I was allowed to 3d model and render what I envisioned the building to look like. My deepest struggles lied in the spoken portion of the proposal. Although I practiced the night before and got with my group to practice it, I still tripped over the explanation and lay out of the action plan. But nonetheless, I was given the opportunity to learn collaboration with my group, use 3d rendering technology and google slides, and draft the lay out and description of the lay out over and over again until I was out of time.

The last and most daunting project, Technical Description. I chose to write about something my teacher in high school spoke of extensively, something called VLANs. The greatest difficulty was realizing I didn’t remember a lot of the material from high school so I had to do so much more research then I realized just to make sure whet I remembered was correct. This brings me to learning citation, I have my bias against it but this assignment gave me more practice on citing the sources I had used. I tried my best to follow example of APA citation from the link Mr. Bubrow had sent and what I could find online. Second, this assignment helped me practice synthesis, pulling information from multiple sources to create my own explanation in my own words. This is specifically in my explanation of what happened to Target, how the Hackers got in, and how much Target lost, which were from 2 different sources. All in all, this was not my favorite assignment because I slept at 4 am the day before my presentation -that is mainly my fault.

Overall, Mr. Bubrow’s Writing for Engineering class was a joyful roller coaster, I loved the class but iffy on the workload. More importantly, the work will definitely help me in my career and time in college so I’m glad I could have practiced: information literacy, citation, drafting, collaborating, reading, synthesis, audience, and use if technology. To push this idea further, the portfolio forced me to learn how to create link on this website that would jump to different sections of this portfolio. It follows the instruction exactly and is fully functional.

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Introduction Paragraph

Welcome, all, to Writing for Engineering- my name is Ethan Nghiem and you’re watching DISNEY XD. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and I never stepped foot outside of the United States, so I am not as cultured as I wish to be. I spent a lot of my childhood playing video games, mainly League of Legends (add me: Jello Cubes) or Valorant (add me: udon#100) spending hundreds of hours playing a year, but since college began I wanted to stop wasting my time so I tend to only play to keep up with friends. Recently my hobbies have been sculpting 3d models in blender so I can one day animate a Pixar quality movie and drawing just to express creativity. As a computer Science major, I know C++ but I am working to learn more languages and become more fluent with HTML and CSS. As you can see I am a hopeless dreamer, I want to accomplish too many different things but I know the one thing I want in this life is inspire a generation to be better people. When I watch shows I mainly watch anime, cartoons, and sitcoms: Community, Rick and Morty, KonoSuba, and stuff like Gravity Falls. As for sports, I like to play handball and Volleyball, but I am a newbie a that and I am down to try anything. My personality can best be described in 3 parts when I am out of energy I laugh inside my head but often keep a still face like a statue; when I have energy I’ll try my best to make things fun; and at all times I will try to sound interesting and cool, but it usually doesn’t make sense, like the title of this introduction. I never get offended by anything and I am friendly, just anxious, so don’t be afraid to reach out- and if you want to animate with me, if you draw, or code something, you’re really cool. Now that I finally put in thought about how to introduce myself, I’m going to go draw, peace OUT.

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Resume and Cover Letter

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Lab Report

The Die Never Lies: Statistical Analysis of Rolling a Pair of Dice 100 times

Figure 1: Foreshadow

Pair of Dice I 3d modeled foreshadowing the results I found after conducting the experiment. 

Ethan Nghiem

March 8th, 2023

Abstract:

Rolling 2 Dice and predicting their combined value is seemingly impossible, but it is shockingly more predictable than it seems. I hypothesize that all of the values have an even chance of occurring, but instead have found that the number 7 is the most common value to result from this experiment. By creating a program to randomly generate values to simulate the rolling of 2 dice, my hypothesis is disproven and I am shown new light.

Introduction: 

You’re at a casino; You just lost your job, but THAT’S OH KAY! Today is your day to gamble. With your life savings in one hand and the last of your sanity in the other, you make your way to the dice table. The goal of the game? Bet on the sum of both dice. For example, Dice A rolls a 2 and Dice B rolls a 3; together the Dice make: 5. Which numbers would be your best guess? Well, that’s the question this very lab report hopes to answer. The experiment is simple: roll a dice 100 times, record the values of each dice, and record its combined value. I emulated this procedure by writing a program to randomly select a value between 1 and 6, and then added the two values via excel sheet. My hypothesis is that all numbers between 2 to 12 have an even chance at being rolled; because 1 die alone has an even chance at rolling any value between 1 to 6 evenly. 

Materials: 

• Windows 10
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• C++ compiler 
• Video Studio Code (VSC) Application 
• VSC Extensions: “Runner” and “C/C++”

Method: 

1. Include C++ libraries: iostream, fstream, stdio.h, cstdlib, and ctime. This section is to assure that I am able to use specific functions. 
2. Create a seed for your random number generator. Because the random number generator will give the same sequence of numbers by default, a seed that relies on the internal clock of my PC will simulate random sequences because the clock is ever changing. 
3. Write a function that types ‘randnum’ (stands for randnum) onto a text document -Text Document A. ‘randnum’ is a variable whose value is determined by the next function. 
4. Write another function whose sole purpose is to select a random value between 1 and 6, and assign that value to ‘randnum’
5. Write a Loop function around the 2 functions above that will repeat the process 100 times. 100 rolls within a second… This casino has a lot of die. 
6. Repeat steps 1 to 5 but change the document that the program writes in. You should now have 2 sets of 100 random numbers between 1 and 6. 
7. From here, you are now able to copy and paste these values directly into excel into their own columns, import into excel. Use cells A1 to A99 for 1 data set and cells B1 to B99 for the other. (I will be referring to cells 1 to 99 as columns from this point on.) 
8. Write an excel function in the C1 cell that will add the sum of column A and B, write “=SUM(A1,B1), and by dragging down on the bottom right corner (cursor should turn into a black cross) of the C1 cell down to C99, it should write the same function for column A and B with respect to the row number. Example: if dragging down to C2, it will add A2 and B2. 
9. Finally find the Mean, Medium, and Mode of each die and their totals. Write =AVERAGE(C1:C99), =MEDIAN(C1:C99), and =MODE(C1:C99)

Results: 

The experiment conducted results in the data below:

Figure 2: Counting Series of Values 

Amount of Each Value that occurred after the experiment 

Figure 3: Analysis of Dice Rolls 

Mean, Median, and Mode of results and counted values table 

Analysis: 

In comparison to my hypothesis, the results show a bell curve like pattern, displaying the middle values as the most common; while the end values of the number set are treated as extremes -values that are rarer than normal. There is nothing that could’ve gone wrong with my experiment; because I checked every step along the way, and every calculus was completed by a computer and a random number algorithm. Therefore, my hypothesis is wrong, and, the probability that numbers between 2 and 12 are even, is not true. The most common value for the dice to result in is actually 7 (Figure 1). As you can see from Figure 2, the pattern is displayed with a bump in the center as each end curves down like a bell, also proving that the median values between 2 and 12 are the most common. With further analysis, the fact that the modes of each die’s results are different, may provide some detail on this statistical phenomenon (Figure 3). 

Marios G. Pavlidesm, Lecturer of Mathematics and Statistics at Frederick University, and Michael D. Perlman, Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Washington, worked together on a dice related experiment (On Estimating the Face Probabilities of Shaved Dice With Partial Data: Pavlidesm and Perlman (2010). Although it is not the same experiment, they collected extremely useful data displaying the reason why 7 is so common. To visually explain this, they created a table with each of the 36 possible combinations that can be made with the dice. The number seven takes up the most of these possible values. The same pattern that occurs in my experiments. 

 Conclusion: 

You should probably bet your life savings on 7, or, if you’re feeling a little more spicy and risky, you can also vote for 6 or 8. Essentially, the resulting value of two dice is not actually all random, center values are more probable in comparison to values on the edge of the number set. Now you know how to gamble with dice; moreover, it can predict scenarios that include the addition of values between 2 totally randomly generated numbers within a range. To further this experiment, you could try more dice or use dice with more faces, or even mix dice with different amounts of faces. 

Reference:

Marios G. Pavlides, Michael D. Perlman (2010). On Estimating the Face Probabilities of Shaved Dice With Partial Data. 

https://www-tandfonline-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/doi/pdf/10.1198/tast.2009.09141

Appendix:

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Group Proposal

The Cozy Domain: A New Student Center for The City College of New York

Fig. 1: The new Beaver’s Dam Student Center

March 27, 2023

Magic Eight Ball:

Ramisa Huq

Ethan Nghiem

Jamal

Kimberly

Introduction: 

Do college students feel thrilled to come to campus just to attend their classes? The City College of New York’s campus is beautiful and is one of the best in the city. But, how do students find connections and meet new people? After the pandemic students have been feeling demotivated, overwhelmed, and disconnected from their studies and social life.  To make students feel connected and less stressed, The City College of New York needs a student center.

Furthermore, the survey conducted shows how students think about a new student center on campus and how connected they feel they are to their peers. A question asked was “Do you think a Student Center, with clubs and a club directory, would better connect you with your peers?” One hundred percent of the results are yes, a student center would better connect you with your peers (Fig.2). Through this we are able to see how the students feel about the college’s community. We also asked, “Do you feel like you are connected to the student body?”  Ninety-two percent of the responses were “no” or as of right now, no. The survey also asked what items and types of rooms should be included in a student center which can be found in the appendix.  This proves that there needs to be a different way to connect with others and make students more active on campus. 

Fig. 2: Depicts the survey results of the first question.

In the article “College Unions, Learning, and Community Building,” they talk about “ an institutional culture that believes learning is derived from frequent student engagement with peers, active and self-directed co-curricular involvement, and regular exposure to diverse perspectives may illustrate these values by locating its student organization offices, its collaborative spaces, and its multicultural programming along primary campus pathways and in highly visible locations” (Rullman, L. J., & Harrington, K. D., 2014). In other words, if the college shows that they care about its students, then there will be more involvement within the campuses. This will also interest more people to apply to CCNY. A university that has a student-focused space is the University of Wisconsin which is called the Union Terrace. They say that it “serve as emblems of the institution’s core values, as literal and symbolic bridges between faculty and students, and as physical vehicles for teaching institutional traditions” (Rullman, L. J., & Harrington, K. D., 2014). This enhances collaboration and provides greater access to technology. All in all, here is the action plan to build our student center on the campus of The City College of New York. 

Action Plan: 

The City College Motto, in English, is “Look behind, look here, look ahead”, meaning to recognize the past, the present, and the future. City College is already the home of great castles that replicate the medieval past -exhibiting power, pride, and history; in addition, the Marshack and the Groove School of Engineering stand at the forefront of the present innovation, and the elements needed to create the future; and finally, a Student Center built for the future, to house the future- us, students. That’s what we offer. For its location, we chose the grassy field in front of Aaron Davis Hall. We decided on a triangular-shaped building with a base of 10,206.46 ft² because the triangle is the shape that represents dynamic creativity. The top half of the building will be made with a wooden exterior while the bottom will mostly feature glass. We plan to call it: Beaver’s Dam, after our school mascot, representing a home that opens its doors to all City College students, as they walk into Floor 1.

Floor 1: Welcome floor. Step into the glass doors and feel the warmth of heaters pushing the cold winter air out, welcoming you with a giant hug. Smell the freshly ground coffee beans as Listen to the music, played by our school’s very own radio club- WCCR, and allow the stress of that paper you rushed to finish last night to ease away. Here you are. Welcome to the Grand Lounge. With windows on each side, everyone is welcome. On the left, of the front door, we have *halal, R2P, and Subway; along with vending machines, chairs, and tables like a small dining area. On the right, we have a club directory so you can finally join the clubs you didn’t know about. Look around to the rest of the floor and we have seats and tables, table tennis and pool tables, couches, and TV. You can lounge, you can watch TV, you can even study. When you’re looking to game, looking for movies, or looking for more public space, take the elevator and welcome to the Entertainment Floor.

Floor 2: Entertainment floor. Computer fans running at top speed- esports, game clubs, the energy drink vending machines. A giant flat-screen TV in HD quality for movie nights, movie clubs, or even watching student-made films. On this floor you can play with friends, meet friends, and grow connections with your fellow students, because that’s what half of college is about, making the connections that matter. The floor features no window, primarily because most lighting is for students to control, whether lighting for the film section of the film section will be built like a movie theater, with rows and seats declining so when the person in front of you is too tall you aren’t in their shadow. The game section will feature a game console surrounded by bean bags and couches, the console area will have adjustable chairs and gaming PCs for casual and competitive players, or even game developers. If you’re looking for a quieter place to work and study, the 3rd and last floor is what you’re looking for.

Floor 3: Quiet floor. Couches, coffee tables, books, and bookshelves, where else is a better place to study and do work than surrounded by books and fellow students who are doing the same? Windows that look into the sky and onto the campus that you just came from, birds passing by, and clouds just an arm’s length away. A Triangular window through the roof shows off the sky and presents students with the warmth of the sun in the afternoon. The quiet floor is meant for students who seek the comfort of silence, and reading, and find the library to be louder than advertised. We have private rooms with beautiful views, clubs with a focus on academics, and a carpeted, open area for anyone to use, the only policy is silence!

Cost and Benefits:

Before investing in one, it’s important to know what exactly a student center is. A student Center, also referred to as a Student Union, is a place where students on campus can go to relax. Typically it’s one catered to the wants of the students and includes recommendations from surveys and interviews that may give an insight as to what many might prefer in a building meant to bring a sense of comfort to a college. It also serves to alleviate the feeling of stress that tends to come from assignments and exams by giving students a place that is centered around the exact opposite, an area where they can go and take a break. While this is all the great stuff about student centers, should CCNY really invest in one? OF COURSE. Student Centers aren’t just great for the students, but for the schools as a whole. One of the greatest aspects of a school that develops by having a Student Center is the school’s reputation. They demonstrate to incoming students as well as the public, to people such as journalists and news offices, and show that the values of a school lie with the students, and not only their academics but their mental well-being and their college experience. A research study was conducted by a group of graduate students, with their purpose being to educate themselves on Student Centers so that they may build one of their own. And they found that for many of the students on campus, the Student Center was much more than a funhouse, a means of just enjoyment, “it was clear that each participant’s involvement at the student center had shaped their development through college.” This was concluded after many personal interviews around the campus of Ball State University where the students discussed the details of the Student Center and its effects on their experience. Funding a Student Center without a doubt is a major investment requiring not only a great sum of money but a lot of time and effort, but the value that they bring to campus is extraordinary. Of course, while there are many great benefits to not only the students but the school as well, money is still of great importance and it would definitely be hard to spend millions and not make anything from it; which is another plus about Student Centers since studies have shown that they result not only in a higher enrollment rate but a higher retention rate as well. “The literature is replete with evidence that a relationship exists between student learning and student involvement and that campus community including physical design has an impact on student learning, academic persistence, and student retention” A quote about the fact that Student Centers have a direct relation to many things, with one of the main being retention rates, and with this would come an increase in tuitions towards the school. These are just a few of the abundance of pros that come with investing in a Student Center and why CCNY should make the investment. Shown below are figures 1 and 2 showing the amount of money a project like this would take as well as how the money gets divided and goes into what. 

Units	Cost per unit	# of Units	Total Cost
Building Costs (amenities included: heating, plumbing, electrical)	Cost per square foot is about $300 without building nearing 10,000 square feet + amenities per floor being about $500,000		~$6 million dollars
Entertainment (TVs, Gaming Consoles, Computers, Pool Tables, and things of this sort)	General cost per entertainment system would range from $200 and higher for smaller items like TVs, and around $1000- $3000 for the units like gaming PCs and a pool table	There would be about 30 units on the main entertainment floor and 20 per the other floors (this includes all types of entertainment systems being used)	~$150,000 dollars
Furniture (beanbags, hammocks, couches, and tables)	General cost per furniture ranges from $300 and higher for the smaller pieces like beanbags and hammocks and around $700- $1000 for couches and such	There would be about 50 units per floor (this includes all types of furniture being used)	~$200,000 dollars
Fast Food/ Restaurants (Burger King, Subways, etc…)	General cost for opening a restaurant chain would cost around $500,000- $1.5 million dollars	There would be 4 different restaurant options	~$2.5 million dollars
TOTAL			$8.8 million dollars

Figure 3-sources found in the appendix

Figure 4 -pie chart depicting data from figure 3

Our Team – The Magic Eight Balls

Here you will be introduced to the collaborators of this project. 

Hello everyone, we’re discussing Jamal Asalat. He is taking this class on writing for engineers because he’s trying to get into the GSOE for electrical engineering. He’s the first in his family to go to college. During his earlier academic years like elementary and middle school, he didn’t really have much idea of what he wanted to pursue, which of course is pretty common. Still, he had a good idea of the field of electrical installation from his dad and so he had a vague idea that something along these lines he wanted as a career. When going to high school, his family and he tried to find schools that could help build on this idea for electrical installation and pursue it and because of this, he ended up going to Queens Technical High School. While hopefully, college may change this, high school was his favorite academic experience, from the teachers to the friends that he was able to meet, with some even choosing the same path to city college as him. While he hasn’t read much, there have been some books that he has found really interesting such as  “Wonder” and “Fahrenheit 451 “. He only speaks English and while he hasn’t been putting much energy into it, he’d definitely love to learn more. Regarding his writing skills, he definitely has room for improvement like trying to build an effective topic, as well as trying to not procrastinate. He’s looking forward to a great semester.

Ethan Nghiem is a Computer Science Freshman at the City College of New York, New York. Born and raised in Brooklyn. In high school, he spent his time studying cisco networking technology and learning the logistics of networking systems. He is a member of the National Technical Honor Society and has a certificate in HTML programming. He can write in HTML, C++, and C#, and spends his free time completing side projects with these languages to both further his skills and build his work ethic. When not working, he studies and plays video games.

Ramisa Huq is a first-year freshman undergraduate student at the City College of New York majoring in Computer Science. She grew up in Queens, NY, and attended Thomas A. Edison Career and Technical Education High School. She got a certification in Medical Assisting from high school. She was a member of HOSA Future Health Professionals and was on the Girl’s Varsity Soccer team. These experiences allowed her to grow in her communication skills, leadership, and problem-solving skills. In her free time, she likes to play sports and video games. She also likes painting and playing with her cats. 

Kimberly Chicaiza is a second-semester freshman at The City College of New York in NYC, NY. Her intended major is Electrical Engineering. She is bilingual and speaks and writes in English and Spanish. She graduated from Queens Technical High School in Long Island City, NY. She graduated with a CTE Endorsement in Electrical Installation in 2022. She was a member of ARTISTA and the National Honor Society. She worked as a content creator online in Drone Cadets over the summer of 2021. There she created a game called  “Drone Cadets” to influence future generations about Drones and how to use them. Talked about the company in a presentation to increase team members. She learned organizational, leadership, and communication skills.  In her free time, she enjoys doing makeup on herself and her clients. She is interested in fitness, beauty, travel, and money management. 

Conclusion:

In conclusion, college students in the City College of New York survey agreed that 92% lack social communication. Isn’t that awful? Well, our extraordinary proposal is to create a student center, known as the Student Union. It is a place where students on campus can have facilities to study and relax. A whole new building for all our college students to have a fun experience throughout their years of studies, knowing that it’s a safe place to meet new peers, have entertainment and study. This building has a beautiful dimension with an immense view from the top and a unique triangle-shaped structure. It planned to name it after our school mascot, called “Beaver’s Dam”. What do you guys think? Any suggestions? Three floors for different events, such as Welcome, Entertainment, and Quiet Floor. Students will have all kinds of comforts behind the corridors of the building, feeling relief from stress and anxiety, which is a great benefit for the mental health of all our college students. For sure, it is a great investment, this building will take a lot of time and a great sum, but it will increase the college’s reputation. The benefits such as an increase in student learning, communication skills, and sense of humor. Students and the school will benefit because the right place for your specific needs will increase social involvement, meaning more students will feel more desirable to enter this building frequently due to its benefits, and new fellow students will be more attracted to becoming part of our community. CCNY should make the investment to build motivation, enjoyment, and eagerness to have a successful and smooth college experience.  

References:

BigRentz. (2023, March 20). Bigrentz. BigRentz. Retrieved March 27, 2023, from https://www.bigrentz.com/blog/commercial-construction-cost-per-square-foot 

Lounge furniture. The Library Store. (n.d.). Retrieved March 26, 2023, from https://www.thelibrarystore.com/category/lounge-furniture 

Rullman, L. J., & Harrington, K. D. (2014). College unions, learning, and community building.

VACCARO, E. L. I. Z. A. B. E. T. H. D. (n.d.). A strategic action plan for student centers & college unions a creative … Retrieved March 27, 2023, from https://cardinalscholar.bsu.edu/bitstream/handle/123456789/195004/VaccaroE_2011-3_BODY.pdf?sequence=1  

Calculations: https://www.calculator.net/triangle-calculator.html?vc=&vx=168.59&vy=162.1&va=&vz=135.49&vb=&angleunits=d&x=79&y=23   

Appendix:

Sides:  168.59 ft, 162.1 ft, 135.49 ft 

P: 466.18 ft (142.09 m)

A: 10,206.46 ft² (948.21 m²)

Floor to Floor Height: 14 ft

Model 1: of Build-

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Technical Description

A Network Divided: An introduction to VLAN concepts and implementation  

Ethan Nghiem

A Target on Target 

What happened: 

In 2013, Target suffered one of the largest data breaches in History. 40 million credit and debit card details were stolen and 70 million accounts of personal information were leaked, ending up on black-market websites and data hauls. Because the hack occurred during Winter, which is the peak for Target’s annual sales, and the many lawsuits that followed, the cost creeped close to 300 million dollars. So how did such a detrimental security breach happen?

How? 

There were many reasons for the hack. For one, Target did invest millions of dollars into their cyber security department prior to the data breach; although it wasn’t perfect, it seemed they were relatively ready. On-the-other-hand, a 3rd party Mechanical company: Fazio, that Target had been working with, fell for a malicious attack allowing hackers to gain access to an administrative profile into Target’s network. And although this was seemingly out of Target’s control, a simple security configuration could have prevented this.

Could’ve been 

That simple security configuration is known as VLANs. With the implementation of VLANs, sensitive information would be in a completely different network than the one used by Fazio, meaning that the account the hackers gained access to wouldn’t actually have given them access to anything important. They would have only had access to information relating to Fazio and the work they have done for Target. 

What are VLANs? 

Who made/History 

Sincoskie debuted his VLAN, Virtual Local Area Networking, method in 1984. Before understanding VLANs we need to understand what a LAN, Local Area Network, and a frame really is. Simply put, LANs are like a small scale network: in your home, you have a collection of endpoints, your personal computer, printers, and servers; and network devices, such as switches and routers, but LANs draw the line at the router. Devices beyond the router that sits within your home are not in your LAN. Frames are much like packets, there are several parts but I will simplify it to 2 parts. One, information that is packaged into bite sized pieces, and two a collection of IDs telling each device it passes through its destination, origin, its contents, and how it should be handled. For example when you’re playing video games and you experience a package lost, you experience your actions being ignored by the game servers because the click from your mouse to your computer was not digested by the server -probably dropped by a router in between. Frames follow the same exact principle, but packets travel across the internet while frames stay within the LAN. Essentially VLANs are multiple simulated networks within one physical network. The main devices responsible for organizing VLANs are switches. Switches create VLANs by adding tags to ethernet frames when they enter an ethernet port. This VLAN tag tells the switch how to handle the frame and where to send it. 

How to implement: 

How to implement 

Well, if you ever get your hands on a switch, the technical implementation would be the configuration of each port on the device. Take this Cisco switch, all these ports, room for some many computers. The switch is already configured to understand VLANs, so to create VLANs, your goal is to assign each port to a VLAN. This makes it so frames that enter one of these VLAN ports can only go out another port with the same VLAN assignment. The only exception are trunk ports, which are ports that can carry traffic from multiple VLANs. This is mainly used for a switch that connects to another switch, which would carry multiple VLANs across switches. 

Vulnerabilities to prevent 

To implement the VLANs without vulnerability, there are 3 cases that may have caused the cyber attack Target suffered in 2013 that I want to focus on. 

Separating VLANs the entire point of VLANs is separating these networks, doing it well would build walls between information that you NEED to keep private and information that you need your coworkers and employees to have access to. 

DTP Dynamic Trunking Protocol is a protocol that is automatically on by the operating system of the switch that would allow for any port to become a trunking port. That would mean if you plug in a computer into any open port on the switch, the computer could access traffic from multiple VLANs, creating a window of opportunity for hackers. To close this window, simply make sure to turn off the protocol. You would be surprised how often simple things, such as this, could be overlooked. 

Literally just open port Open physical ports are like leaving all the windows in your house open. You obviously do not want people getting into your house, so lock your windows by closing these ports which can easily be done with one line of code in the switch configuration interface. 

Fun Fact: 

OSI model In networking there is something called the OSI model, Open Systems Interconnection model, dividing network functionalities into 7 different layers. With the OSI model you can identify the part of communication that a function, like VLANs, corresponds to. In our case VLANs sit in the 2nd layer of the OSI model, called Data linked -where data on the frame is formatted. 

Subnetting layer 3 of the OSI model, network layer, defines the logical paths packets would take. The most well known component of the network layer is the IP address. Subnetting deals with dividing IP addresses into segments which will directly relate with the VLAN structure of your network. This would be the second step to configuring VLANs. 

References 

1. Hartzog. W, Solove. D. J. (2022). We Still Haven’t Learned the Major Lesson of the 2013 Target Hack. Slate, paragraph 6 and 7.
2. Xiaokui Shu, Ke Tian (2017). Breaking the Target: An Analysis of Target Data Breach and Lessons Learned. IEEE, 2-6.
3. Vance. J. (2022). What is a VLAN and how does it work? Virtual LAN (VLAN) technology enables network architects to segment physical devices into logical subgroups for performance and security reasons. NETWORKWORLD, 1.