Project | Computer Security (Fall 2025)

Project

The project is a semester long exploration of a topic not deeply covered in class. You should work in teams to produce both a video presentation and a report on this topic. The due dates are described below. The project is worth 20% of your overall grade.

Due Dates

Important Advice

Do not wait until the deadline of one milestone to start working on the next one, especially for the final report. You should begin working on the final report while collecting the annotated bibliography, as you will be gathering important materials or the report during this process.

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(?)

Grading

This part is graded on a complete or incomplete. Everyone should get a complete.

Annotated Bibliography (25%)

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:

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

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

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. Your presentation should be pre-recorded to ensure that it is of appropriate length and submitted via instructions below.

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. Videos longer than 5-minutes will receive a deduction Do not play tricks by speeding up your video to meet the 5-minute requirement. The goal of this exercise is to see if you can distill important information down to 5 minutes.

Submission Requirements

Upload your group’s presentation to a video sharing website (e.g. YouTube or Google drive) and make it only accessible via a unique URL, i.e., the public should not be able to find it unless they know the URL. Include the URL in the first or second page of your slides of presentation. Slides of your presentation should be submitted to Blackboard. Files should be named name1-name2-name3-topic.pdf where name1 is a team member’s 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).

Grades on this part will be assigned using the following scale

Final Report (35%)

Your final report should provide a summary of your research on the new topic. It should have the following organization:

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 (10%)

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:

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:

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.

If there are additional topics you might be interested in, you can ask your instructor for guidance