Assignment 1 Topics and Sample Questions

CS563 Advanced Computer Security

Due by Noon on Wed 19 September 2007

This assignment has two objectives. First it will help us assess your ability to form interesting and original research questions. Second it will help us decide what we will focus on in the remainder of the CS563 course. By the deadline above please provide statements on two topics chosen from the following list: unwanted traffic on the Internet (uti), secure web services (sws), tamper-resistant systems (trs), monitoring and surveillance (mas), and critical infrastructure protection (cip). Each of your two statements should have the following form:

1. Statement number and area. For instance: Statement #1 : Unwanted Traffic on the Internet. This indicates that working on unwanted traffic is your first preference for a topic to study.
2. Your name.
3. First question (or problem). For instance: Question #1.1 : Is it feasible to use network layer gateways to address high-level threats such as viruses and spam? Your question should be your own as far as possible, although you may not be the first to frame it.
4. A proposed approach to the first question. For instance: Approach #1.1 : Create policy so that messages are decrypted at gateways and checked for viruses. This should be your own idea as far as possible. Do not write more than a paragraph about your approach.
5. Second question.
6. Proposed approach to the second question.
7. First related work. Provide a document you might study (and perhaps present) related to your topic. This should be related to one or both of your questions and approaches, but the relationship can be rather general. In particular, it does not need to address your question directly, although a good choice is a related work that addresses the question with a different approach.
8. Second related work.

Provide hard copies of all materials to Trisha Benson in SC4322. This means printing both your statements and related works.

NOTE: Don’t miss the fact that we need two statements indicating a first and second preference for areas to study. Focus areas for the course will be based on stated preferences together with our assessment of quality of your proposed research questions, approaches, and related works. However, you will not be required to work on the questions you ask here. Forming good questions takes time and we will work on this for the next few weeks in connection with studying related work.