Computer Security Bonus Project (optional)

Note: Completing these projects is optional. A successfully completed project will earn you bonus points, which will be added to your overall earned score at the end of the semester.

Submission instructions:

• A completed project must be submitted electronically (as a single zip file) to the instructor (yang@uhcl.edu), cc’ing the TA, before April 7, 2011. Late submissions will not be graded.
• In the subject line, clearly indicate the course number, your name, and the project number.
• Use your name at the beginning of the zip file name.
• Give the TA a demonstration of your project(s) during his office hours, no later than April 7, 2011.
• You may elect to work on either or both of the projects.

Project 1 Project 2

Project 1: A protocol for secure data communication in a network

Bonus points: up to 3%

Suppose you work as a network engineer for a small business company, which possesses a local area network of 100 computers. Your boss, the IT department director, asked you to design a communication protocol for the computers in that network. The protocol should provide the following security services:

a. For each communication session, the computers should authenticate each other to establish a secure session before data communications are conducted between them. Note: Use digital certificates for mutual authentication.

b. The data communication should be confidential, and provide data integrity and origin integrity, based on a session key. Note: To support strong security, a session key should be used for one session only and never be reused.

To submit:

a) The protocol: Design and write down your protocol by clearly indicating the entities (say, computer-A, computer-B), their respective actions (say, create a message, send its certificate to computer-B), the employed cryptographical methods (if any), and any necessary assumptions.

b) Overall integration: In addition to the protocol itself, explain how the protocol would be incorporated into the network.

c) Justification: Justify your solution by explaining why you believe your protocol will satisfy the constraints stated above.

Project 2: Creating certificates programmatically and saving them into a keystore

Bonus points: up to 3%

Refer to the following sample programs, all of which deal with keystore and/or certificates.

· KeyStoreExample.java (also check out information at http://sce.uhcl.edu/yang/teaching/csci4233spring2011/KeyStoreExample.htm)

· PrintCertFromKeyStore.java

· PrintCertInfo.java

· SignCertificate.java

Develop a Java application that programmatically creates the following certificate chains and saves the created certificate chains to a keystore file.

A<<A> (A is a self-signed root CA.)

A<<B>>A<<A>> (B is certified by A; that is, A is B’s CA.)

B<<C>>A<<B>>A<<A>> (C is certified by B.)

Note: Do not use keytool to create those certificate chains (as is done in your project 3). Be sure the issuer/subject relationships are set up right (as stated above).

To submit:

a) The Java program(s).

b) Screen snapshots of running the Java application.

c) The created keystore file.

d) Screen shots of the displayed certificate chains (using keytool –list –v).