Project
Due Dates
- Topic Selection: Due Oct 18 (5%)
- Annotated Bibliography: Due Nov 22 (25%)
- Presentation: Due Dec 4 (30%)
- Final Report: Due Dec 9 (30%)
- Teamwork Evaluation: Due Dec 9 (10%)
Assignment Description
You will conduct an independent research project to explore a topic in computer security (or privacy) that is not full covered in this class. As this is a relatively short class, there are only so much we can cover, and this will give you and your classmates a way to be exposed to other topics in the space.
As part of the project, you will be expected to collect research and other source articles that you will synthesize in a report and a presentation. You may select any topic you want, with instructor approval, and if you’re unsure of what topic to choose, a list of possible topics are provided at the bottom of the document.
Group Assignment
You can work in teams of two to three. Keep in mind, the larger the team, the larger the expectation on the research. If you wish to work alone, you may request to do so from the instructor.
Use of AI
You may not use AI to either summarize documents or produce your report. If it is determined that you have done so, not only you yourself will receive a failing grade on the project, but your entire team.
Due Dates
All due dates for the project are firm. There is no possibility of extensions.
Requirements
Topic and Group Selection (5%)
By the due date, you should select a team and report team members. You should select three possible topics, in rank order, that you would be interested in reporting on. The instructor will inform you of which topic you should work on after reviewing all the preferred topics. This is to ensure that there are a diversity of topics.
It is possible that you may select a topic covered in class, but if you do, you should ensure that you indicate something deeper and more interesting around that topic. For example, if you want to cover a cryptographic topic, it should offer (much) more than what we did in class.
Submission Requirements
You should submit the following as a single PDF file to Blackboard(?)
- Group Members, GWIDs, and Email Addresses
- Topic List (in rank preference)
Grading
This part is graded on a complete or incomplete. Everyone should get a complete.
Annotated Bibliography (20%)
In researching your topic, you should identify at least 10 sources that you will use in your presentation and report. Of those 10 sources, at least half (5) must be academic, peer-reviewed research articles from the last 5-6 years. Note that you may or may not fully understand the research, which is totally understandable, but you should be able to extract the basic findings and implications. For non-research article sources, these could be websites, books, or other resources you will use in your report.
To help you find reputable, academic publications, you should use Google Scholar to search on your topic. You should select artciles from the following venues:
- USENIX Security (Sec) (USENIX)
- Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy (SOUPS)
- IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) (Oakland)
- ACM Conference on Communication Systems (CCS)
- ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI)
- ISOC Network and Distributed System Symposium (NDSS)
- Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS)
- Annual Computer Applications Conference (ACSAC)
- Workshop on Offensive Technology (WOOT)
- International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defense (RAID 2023)
- Detection of Intrusion and Malware & Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA)
- European Symposium on Research in Computer Secuirty (ESORICS)
- IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroSP)
- ACM Asian Conference on Computer and Communication Security (ASIACCS)
- ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (ToPS)
- ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC)
- ACM’s The Web Conference (WWW)
- Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy (USEC)
- European Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy (EuroUSEC)
If you find articles from other venues, you can ask the instructor about their reputability and if you can include them. You should avoid non-peer reviewed articles, like those on ArXiv.
Submission Requirements
You should submit your annotated bibliography as a single PDF file to Blackboard(?). It should include the following
- The name of each of your group members, their GWIDs, and emaile addresses
- For each article you wish to include
- Full reference to the article (includes authors, title, venue, date published, etc.)
- Summary: One-two paragraph summary of the article
- Connection: One-two paragraph summary of how it connects to the topic of your project
YOU MAY NOT USE AI TO SUMMARIZE THE ARTICLES. Doing so may result in your failing the ENTIRE project.
Grading
You can receive the following grades on your bibliography
- Fully Complete: 100%
- Meets all requirements with high quality details and descriptions
- Satisfactory: 92%
- Meets all requirements
- Needs Improvement: 85%
- Significant portions could be improved
- Incomplete: 75%
- Notable portions are incomplete
If you received a Needs Improvement or Incomplete, you can resubmit for corrections to raise your grade to satisfactory. Consult with the instructor on a timeline for doing that.
Presentation (25%)
You are required to prepare a 5-minute presentation on your topic to be presented in class. A generic outline of your presentation should cover/answer the following questions.
- Topic introduction and motivation
- What makes this interesting and important?
- What is the current state of research on this topic?
- What are some future directions?
While 5-minutes is relatively short, you should be able to cover all of these items. All members of your group should speak at some point during your presentation.
Submission Requirements
Slides, presentation material should be submitted to the Box Folder (TBD) prior to class to facilitate easy presentations. Files should be named name1-name2-name3-topic.[pdf,ppt,etc.]
where name1
is a team members name.
Grading
Presentations will be graded based on the instructor evaluation and audience evaluation on the following points, using a scale from Excellent (3), Satisfaction (2), Needs Improvement (1), Unsatisfactory (0).
- Topic Overview
- Topic Interest/Impact
- Current State
- Future Directions
- Overall Quality
The class average (average of students in the audience) will then be averaged with the instructors score. Grades on this part will be assigned using the following scale
- 100% : 3.0
- 95% : 2.5 (to 3.0)
- 90% : 2.0 (to 2.5)
- 85% : 1.5 (to 2.0)
- 80% : 1.0 (to 1.5)
- 70% : 0.5 (to 1.0)
- 50% : 0.0 (to 0.5)
Final Report (30%)
Your final report should provide a summary of your research on the new topic. It should have the following organization:
- Introduction and Motivation (3-4 paragraphs)
- What is the topic you’re studying?
- What makes it interesting and important?
- Key Examples (3-4 paragraphs)
- Provide two examples, in the real world, where this topic has an impact.
- Current State of Research (5-6 paragraphs)
- Summarize current interesting problems in this space, from your exploration of research papers.
- Future Directions (2-3 paragraphs)
- What are some new challenges or explorations in this space?
You are required to have at least two figures and ten references (from your anotated bibliography).
Submission Requirements
You should submit a single PDF file with references and figures to Blackboard(?). Be sure to include a title and the names the of all your group members, their GWIDs, and their email addresses.
Teamwork Evaluation (20%)
As this is a group project, it’s important that everyone contributes equally. Each team member will confidentially report on their other team member(s) based on their contribution to the project. Each team member will submit the following items:
- Availability/Communication
- Task Completion
- Friendliness/Composure
Using the following scale: Excellent (3), Satisfaction (2), Needs Improvement (1), Unsatisfactory (0).
Submission Requirement
Feedback forms will be submitted via blackboard(?)
Grading
The average of scores will be used to compute your final grade in this task:
- 100% : 2.0 (to 3.0)
- 80% : 1.5 (to 2.0)
- 70% : 1.0 (to 1.5)
- 60% : 0.5 (to 1.0)
- 0% : 0.0 (to 0.5)
It’s the expectation that everyone should get 100% on this section, and any score below that will be lead to a team discussion to understand the issues involved. It should not be the case that team issues are only revealed at the time of submitting this project.
Potential Topics
Below a list of potential general topic areas, but you should consider diving deeper into any or expanding beyond this list.
- Phishing and SpearPhishing (training and prevention)
- Password Managers
- Differential Privacy
- Zero Knowledge Proofs
- Malware Analysis
- Intrusion Detection
- Hardware Security Tokens
- Wireless Security
- GPS Spoofing
- Privacy Inference Attacks
- Adversarial ML
- Private Set Operations
- Supply Chain Security
- Anonymous Networking (e.g., Tor)
- Blockchain Technology (note you can’t just do BitCoin, but more than just for coins)
- Memory Safety
- Website Fingerprinting
- Password Guessing
- Privacy Policy Analysis
- Privacy Labels
- Secure Messaging
- Fuzzing
- DNS Cache Poising
- Anti-Censorship Techniques
- IoT Security
- Vehicle Security
- Security in VR/AR
- Secure Enclaves
- Secure Multi Party Communication
If there are additional topics you might be interested in, you can ask your instructor for guidance