Reference no: EM132487242

ITC595 - Information Security - Charles Sturt University

Learning outcome 1: be able to justify security goals and the importance of maintaining the secure computing environment against digital threats;

Learning outcome 2: be able to explain the fundamental concepts of cryptographic algorithms;

Learning outcome 3: be able to examine malicious activities that may affect the security of a computer program and justify the choice of various controls to mitigate threats;,

Learning outcome 4: be able to compare and contrast the security mechanisms of a trusted operating system with those used in a general purpose operating system;

Learning outcome 4: be able to investigate and justify the use of the access control mechanisms and user authentication processes;

Learning outcome 5: be able to compare and contrast foundational security policies and models that deal with integrity and confidentiality.

Assessment item - Research project (Report)

TASK

This assessment consist of two parts:
Selecting a research topic of interest, submitting an abstract and writing a research report.

Part 1: Selection of topic and Abstract
In this part of the assessment, you are required to submit:
• the title and an abstract for your selected research project. The abstract will provide an overview of your selected topic, along with key security challenges in that area and why you have selected this to be your area of research.
• A reference list at the end of the submission, that will have a maximum of two articles (at least one journal article) used to build your discussion for this abstract.
Select a topic for your research project from the list of research areas/topics provided below:

• Ransomware and human impacts (literature),
• 40 years malware, intrusion detection systems or intrusion prevention systems detection algorithms (select only 1 topic),
• Vehicle to vehicle (v2v) and vehicle to infrastructure (v2i) security challenges,
• Security and trust in ubiquitous systems,
• Spam detection using machine learning,
• IoT/IIoT denial of service and distributed denial of service attacks,
• Social engineering techniques and mitigation mechanisms,
• Data crawl techniques,
• PAN security and preventive techniques,
• Investigating security of blockchain-enabled applications

Part 2: Research report
In this assessment, you are required to provide a complete report of your research topic, that you chose in Part 1 by completing the following aspects:
• Overview/Introduction of the selected topic,

• Highlighting the challenges/problems in your chosen research topic,

• Identification of any gaps in the literature by:
discussing areas/issues that you believe have been addressed in the current literature;
highlighting areas/issues that have not been addressed or adequately addressed; and
discussing your view(s) on the issue(s) that you see as being critical.
• Summarize the future research directions based on the identified gaps.

To accomplish the above, you are expected to read and critically evaluate recent research in your selected research area by citing a minimum of 5 research articles. Students are encouraged to access such research articles from well known and reputed research portals such as IEEE, ACM, Springer, Wiley etc. Please note Wikipedia and general blogs will not be considered as reputable citations.

Assessment item 3 - Research Project - Designing Cryptographic system

TASK
You have been asked to develop a data transfer system from Port Macquarie to Wagga Wagga Campus. In this task, your job is to ensure that stream data is protected. In order to ensure that your system operates in a secure manner, you need to develop a prototype of your system in CryptoTool 2. CrypTool 2 (CT2) is an open-source program offering an innovative visual programming GUI to experiment with cryptographic procedures and to animate their cascades.

Task 1:
In this task, you are required to:
1. Search RSA (Rivest - Shamir - Adleman) and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) algorithms suitable for the above scenario, keep in mind that you can expand your system to more than one user,

2. Select a cryptographic algorithm and discuss why you think your selected algorithm is appropriate for the above scenario,
3. Design and develop a cryptographic system to encrypt live webcam data from Port Macquarie to Wagga Wagga using your chosen algorithm,
4. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your system,

5. You must document your approach with a description of the screenshots.

Task 2:

In this task, you are required to:
1. Search HMAC,
1. Part 1: Design and develop a message-based system to encrypt and decrypt messages using an RSA algorithm,
2. Part 2: On the basis of Part 1 system, you should integrate the HMAC algorithm into your system,
1. The HMAC has to check message received from Port Macquarie,

2. If the integrity of the message approved, then decrypt the message,
3. Else, a message, or false Boolean output.
3. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your system,

4. You must document your approach with a description of the screenshots.