CSCI 5234 Web Security

Sample Research Projects

Sample Programming Projects

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Research Projects

NOTES:

• This is an individual project.
• Each individual should pick a topic of interest from the following list. You may choose your own topic. Either way, make sure you discuss your topic with the instructor before starting your work.

List of Sample Projects:

- Web Analytics and Measurements of User Behaviors (Check out Google Analytics and related technology)

- Security/Privacy Issues in Large-scale Online Collaboration (Check out Wikipedia.org and articles related to online knowledge management and online collaboration)

- Security Issues and Countermeasures in Cloud Computing

- Security Issues and Countermeasures in Mobile Applications

- Security Issues in Web 2.0 Applications

- Evaluation of Effectiveness of a Websites

- Evaluation of Effectiveness in Web 2.0 Applications

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Programming Projects

NOTES:

• This could be either an individual or a team project.
• Each team (~ 1 or 2 members) shall select one of the projects from the following list. If you've got a project of your own, check with the instructor first for approval.
• Once the project is selected, each team should send its choice via an email to the instructor. The email should include the tile of the project, and the names, IDs and email addresses of the team members.
• Each team shall meet regularly to work on the project.
• Schedule a weekly or bi-weekly meeting time with the instructor for regularly reviewing the progress of the project.
• Check the syllabus page for due dates of presenting the project design and demo of the completed project.

Sample projects:

1. A user service portal for a business company to share product and service information with customers and employees

The goal of this project is to build a Web-based portal for a business company as part of its customer service. The portal should provide rich information about the company’s products and services. Online features such as discussion forums should allow the customers and employees to be enrolled and to discuss issues and solutions related to the company’s products and services. All users must be enrolled first before being able to participate at the discussions.

Security features such as access control, data integrity and confidentiality should be implemented as part of this application.

2. A Web-based Knowledge Portal that Collect and Analyze User Behavior

The goal of this project is to create a web-based application that provides two main functionalities:

(a) It allows the site manager and the public to contribute their knowledge to a specific topic (for example, Web Security) by posting articles and participating in online discussions.

(b) It allows the website administrator to collect statistics about user behavior, such as posting to the portal, commenting on posted material, creating new workgroup, participating in workgroups, etc.

Access control and other security issues must be handled in such a web-based application.

(Optional) It is desirable that each user of that portal be assigned a ranking (in a way similar to how buyers and vendors are ranked in eBay).

The team(s) interested in this project will work closely with the instructor, in order to understand the functionalities that must be built into the system. The team may choose to develop a wiki-based system or a traditional 3-tier web-based system. The team(s) interested in this topic may start by reading this or other articles about online collaboration.