Final Cybersecurity Video/Exploration
Now that we have learned the nuts and bolts of computer networks and the internet, students are ready to dive into the art of cybersecurity and security engineering. Students will choose a topic that they will research and explore technically in some way, and then they will make a Youtube video to explain it to the general public. Students should present both a threat model and possible defense strategies against the threat.
I expect the video to be clear enough for anyone who's completed the computer networks part of this class to understand, regardless of if they have any knowledge of cybersecurity.
The final video will be due on Thursday 5/15, and feedback to other students will be due by Sunday 5/18.
Grading
Below is a grading breakdown for the project, which will make up 10% of your overall class grade
| Category | Percentage of Grade |
| Quality of Technical Explanation, which demonstrates an expert knowledge of computer networks topics | 40% |
| Clarity of the explanations in the video | 20% |
| Technical exploration of the topic. This could include some demos in wireshark or mininet, a socket program, or some visualization of data you've gathered related to the frequency/severity of these attacks across the internet | 30% |
| Making it your own | 10% |
Peer Feedback
To increase a breadth of knowledge and to keep the dialogue going, each student will provide reflections and constructive feedback on three other videos from the class over Discord.
Suggested Topics
Below are some suggested topics that any student who's taken this class should have the knowledge to explore, though you should feel free to choose any topic that interests you, as long as I approve of it.
- Distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks
- ARP poisoning, man-in-the-middle attacks
- Phishing attacks (including whale/spear)
- Password attacks
- DNS cache poisoning
- MAC address flooding
- TCP SYN flooding
- Web attacks (e.g. XSS, CSRF, SQL Injection)