His name is Reuben Paul and he’s just 9 years old. This third grader is already an accomplished hacker, cybersecurity expert and an app developer. What’s more is the fact that he’s the CEO of his company Prudent Games. Last year at the Ground Zero Summit, Paul delivered his keynote on Children’s Day. This year, he was the youngest attendee at one of the biggest hacker conferences in the world.
He’s attending the conference being held at the Ashok Hotel in New Delhi as a ‘special ambassador’ to encourage the kids to learn more about cybersecurity. Quoting his hero Spiderman, Reuben says, “With great hacking skills you get power, and with great power comes great responsibility.”
“With all the data breaches, cyberbullying and other kinds of attacks happening on the Internet, it’s important for us to teach kids and educate them on the dangers so they can protect themselves.”
Reuben spoke at the conference and mentioned Cyber KungFu, telling about his experiences as the youngest Do KungFu 2nd degree black belt.
His company Prudent Games makes games that combine fun with educational content. “Reuben was selected for the Gifted and Talented programme (run by the Texas education system) and had to make a game. The others made boardgames and such like, but Reuben who is passionate about video games, decided to come up with one,” says his mother Sangeetha, an IT professional herself.
Prudent Games also made an app that shows children how to come up with secure passwords. His another app tells the basics of Bruteforce attacks used to crack passwords.
His father mentions that when he was just five, he used words like firewall and he was totally surprised. “At age five I introduced him to Scratch, and then by six we were looking at real world programing and security concepts,” Mano Paul said.
Apart from hacking and app development, Reuben spends time with his friends and takes gymnastics, swimming, and Kung Fu lessons.
