A Research Mentor’s Perspective

Dr. Susan Gerhart, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering

gerharts@erau.edu http://pr.erau.edu/~gerharts

Assistant: Kelley Harbin, junior CS major

What did we do?

• 4 teams, 3-5 students each

• 2 topics– Viruses and Worms – intruder programs– Stegonography – messages in images

• 5 sessions, Fri./Sat. morning

• Developed websites

• Final presentations

Why Computer Security?

• Fascinates students• Fact of everyday life• Outreach for ERAU NSF Grant

– Cryptography (NSA style security)– Buffer overflow (causes intrusions)– Bioterrorism defense in transportation

• http://nsfsecurity.pr.erau.edu• U.S. needs “security corps” to protect

websites

Research Progression

1. Topic intro, team formation, library session

2. Framework/terms: vulnerabilities in an office: eavesdropping, networks, many dimensions

3. Interview Q&A with a security expert, Dr. Matt Jaffe, CS prof, former Hughes

4. Setting up a website to present results

5. Exchanged presentations with bioterrorism groups

Building a website

• Used ERAU server space, e.g. http://pr.erau.edu/~ubteam2

• Learned Mozilla Composer, a WYSYWYG HTML editor

• I uploaded (another tool, SSH) to website

• Students went nuts with images and colors

• 1steg..htm 1VirusWorms.htm 2VirusWorm.htm

Presentations/Results

• No programming, mostly writing• Who’s the audience on the web?• Define terms, concepts• Explain in own words, how worms work,

images hide info• Tell do’s and do not’s – whom to trust• History and future trends – 10 years ahead• Asking questions of other presenters

What did students learn?

• Lots of security websites • Security is a field of study, future career?• Technology concepts: images, networks• Skills for building web pages• Teamwork and group writing hard

What did I learn?

• Students very comfortable with computing

• Hard to get across security framework, need more than office vulnerability tour

• Stegonography needed more background

• Security expert went over heads

• Website creation was doable, some preferred PPT to HTML, worth it?

• Bioterrorism exchange good dry run