COMP715/815GB:2014 Adam


 * Home

Info

 * Planned Meeting Times:
 * Thursdays 5:30pm - 6:30pm


 * Group leader:
 * Adam
 * Students:
 * Colby
 * Kenneth
 * Zack

Week of Sept 22nd
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Review assigned reading;
 * Symmetric/Asymmetric key encryption principles;
 * Public/Private key encryption advantages/disadvantages, and RSA in particular;
 * Function and purpose of digital signatures;
 * CIA triad (brief).

Discussion
 * Because we wanted to hold to a one hour meeting, I focused on keeping the group concentrated to the above objective list. This early in the semester there is not much material that we really needed to study, we have decided. I do believe however that we will quickly get more intense with our studying as the semester progresses. I look forward to working on our lab and homework assignments together and using these two assignments as our platform or our venue for discussion. It's subjective, of course, but I can see myself leading discussions based upon the requirements and extents of the assignments.

Week of Sept 29th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Discuss homework and any experienced difficulties;
 * Discuss a few websites and their security.

Discussion
 * We spent the majority of our meeting discussing the homework. One object we spent a particular amount of time on was the role of the seed, and different ways we could establish it. For example, the seed could be the string length, the ASCII value, or either of those multiplied by a number, etc. This was a fun discussion, and we came up with some neat ideas. Everyone in our groups seems to be proficient with the class material at this point, so we didn't have any problem staying within our one hour block of time. What also helped our group was that I asked each member to bring an objective list of things to discuss -- to be prepared for our meeting and know what they wanted to talk about, if anything. Not only did this help us limit our meeting to an hour, it also enabled us to be most effective with that small amount of time.

Week of Oct 6th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Discuss the two questions from this week's lab;
 * Discuss the homework 3 assignment due next week.

Discussion
 * This week we had fun discussing further the group activity we did (yesterday) in class. It's a fun topic, because there is never an ultimate right answer to the question. Because of it's nature, security can never be 100% effective all the time. We discussed this and shared some theories without getting away from the topic -- which isn't always easy to do.
 * Lastly, we briefly discussed the upcoming homework assignment that's due, and everyone seems to be on track.

Week of Oct 13th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Any questions?;
 * How'd the homework go for everyone?;
 * Two types of crypto systems: Public/Private (Asymmetric) key and Shared (Symmetric) key;
 * Different types of Asymmetric and Symmetric keys.

Discussion
 * This week we touched base and I kind of felt-out how everyone was feeling at this point in the semester. We have our midterm coming up, and although we're not quite certain at this point what may be on it, we were still able to maintain an effective discussion about any topics we were weak on. We spent the most significant amount of time talking about two types of cryptographic systems and some of the different flavors of each.

Week of Oct 20th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Midterm.

Discussion
 * There is nothing else to discuss this week except for the midterm. Students are nervous, naturally, of Prof. Jonas' intimidation tactics -- which I very much appreciate because this is what makes the student really study hard and carefully. We discussed particular questions that were on the midterm: types of crypto systems, lock bumping, ways of managing risk, access control methods, main components of an operating system, and how to calculate MES.

Week of Oct 27th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Study for midterm.

Discussion
 * This week our only priority was to study for the midterm. We went over the practice exam that we took last week. We discussed lock picking a bit, and we also discussed MES as well. Among the other topics that we discussed, we talked briefly about the CIA triad, stream/block ciphers, different types of malware and attacks (virus, trojans, worms, DoS, etc.). Lastly, we shared our notecard strategy and what eachother might write on it to create the most effective aid for the exam.

Week of Nov 3rd
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Homework assignment;
 * Any remaining questions about content of exam?;
 * Differences between TCP/UDP;
 * NAT;
 * Threats in transport layer.

Discussion
 * We had a good discussion this week about what we learned in class yesterday. We discussed the difference between TCP and UDP and which protocol should be used in a particular scenario (Skype = UDP, web page = TCP). We also discussed how NAT works, the critical role that a NAT routing table plays in networking, and how NAT has enabled IPv4 to continue to work in a world as populous as ours. Finally, we discussed threats within the transport layer, such as TCP Session Hijacking, Ack Storms, and difference DoS attacks (Ping flood, Smurf attack, Syn flood, Optimistic TCP Ack Attack).

Week of Nov 10th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Discuss Homework 4;
 * Discuss last class.

Discussion
 * This week we briefly discussed the homework 4 assignment that was issued yesterday. Our team already has some pretty good and interesting ideas of how to achieve this hide-and-seek problem. I pointed out that this assignment appears that it will demand a lot of time from us and to plan accordingly. I look forward to meeting next week to see how creative my teammates are.
 * We also spent time covering material from last class: Brute force techniques, Firewalls, and the OSI layer

Week of Nov 17th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Discuss Homework 4;
 * Discuss last class.

Discussion
 * During our meeting today we discussed our struggles with Homework 4. This assignment seemed to test our creativity in the use of regular expressions. We agreed and discussed how the logic behind regular expressions is what makes them so much fun, and also how being most creative in the logic of regular expressions we can solve a lot of problems at once. Some students seem to be struggling with this while others are excelling. I believe this is because regular expressions require a lot of time spent exercising and augmenting them...and some people just don't obligate that necessary time. My team seems to be doing well.
 * Discussed Tunneling and different flavors of it, Intrusion Detection Systems, and Wireless networking with an emphasis on security.

Week of Nov 24th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Thanksgiving

Discussion
 * After touching-base with my teammates I made the educated decision to not meet this week as it is the week of Thanksgiving. My teammates are responsible and they appear to be doing well, so I felt that meeting was not necessary this week in light of the holiday. We will regroup next week, and I expect everyone will have made significant progress.

Week of Dec 1st
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Preparation for final exam

Discussion
 * I was not in class this week, so I relied on my teammates to lead the discussion of the topics covered in class yesterday. I made a point to print off all of the notes located in the private section of our course website...I analyzed them before our meeting and decided what I felt was most important to cover during our meeting so as to be most prepared for our exam next week. I encouraged my teammates to bring-up any topics, concepts, or trivial terms they were not confident of functional with. Very good meeting this week, and I am confident in my teammates as well as my ability to perform next week on the final exam. I left the forum open after our meeting and made myself available for any questions anyone might have.

Week of Dec 8th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Post exam discussion

Discussion
 * Tonight's meeting was pretty smooth and quick. We discussed the exam and the things we will take away from this class. I made sure to ask and cover anything that was not understood on the exam. We covered all of our final thoughts and feelings about the class and its content as this is our last meeting. We expressed our thanks and appreciation for the past 15 weeks we spent together.

Week of Dec 15th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Relax and kick-off Winter Break.

Discussion
 * I made the decision to not hold our group meeting this week as it is our final week of class. Wednesday 12/17 will be our last class, which will only be presentations and goodbyes. I cannot speak for anyone else, but I had a great semester...thanks for everything.