{"id":5120,"date":"2018-05-18T01:31:29","date_gmt":"2018-05-18T01:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecm.eng.auburn.edu\/wp\/emag\/?p=5120"},"modified":"2018-05-22T13:35:05","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T13:35:05","slug":"the-rhodes-to-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ecm.eng.auburn.edu\/wp\/emag\/?p=5120","title":{"rendered":"The Rhodes to success"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Matthew<\/a>While other teenagers were spending summer break lounging by the pool or working summer jobs, Matthew Rogers was meticulously dissecting a malware program developed by a foreign adversary.<\/p>\n

For some people, scanning line after line of code from the confines of a Huntsville office building may epitomize monotony, but it represented a massive opportunity for the 17-year-old computer whiz.<\/p>\n

Tasked with reverse-engineering the malware program, Rogers knew he was in for a daunting challenge. Although the malware had been flagged by antivirus software, unraveling its true intent was proving difficult due to layers of obfuscation. It didn\u2019t help matters that the code was barely decipherable to the human eye.<\/p>\n

It was 2014, and Rogers and three friends were the first high school interns ever hired by the Huntsville-based science and technology firm Dynetics. Honestly, not much was expected of them when they were assigned the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur supervisors said, \u2018OK, well go at it. We don\u2019t really expect you guys to finish. This is kind of a test run,\u2019\u201d Rogers recalled.<\/p>\n