COMP715/815GB:2014 Mohamed


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Info

 * Planned Meeting Times:
 * Tuesdays 3:00pm - 4:00pm


 * Group leader:
 * Mohamed
 * Students:
 * David
 * Morgan

Week of Sept 22nd
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Get a sense of the programming background of the group members.
 * Exchange information and online resources about Javascript.
 * Start writing the code for part of the assignment.
 * Discuss, briefly, the first two questions.

Discussion This is our first group meeting. We spent five minutes talking about our IT background and what we know about information security. We agreed that the coding questions are the most difficult. Even though the homework was due the following week, I suggested that we start writing the Javascript code. Be the end of this session every one in the group had an initial version of the final program. Finally, we discussed about what are the best practices to debug a Javascript code.

Week of Sept 29th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Finish the Javascript program.
 * Review the theoretical part of the homework.
 * Discuss the CIA Triad.

Discussion In this session, we made sure that we all finished our coding part of the assignment. We spent most of the time reflecting on how we answered the discussion questions.

Week of Oct 6th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Go over the second question of the homework

Discussion We were trying to find a reasonable solution for question number two. Each one of us had a different approach to the problem, which is a good sign. We spent the hour explaining our solutions to each other. By the end of the session we concluded that we need to do more research.

Week of Oct 13th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * An overview of MES, DES, and 3DES.
 * Discuss Homework2/lab section

Discussion For this group meeting we discussed the implementation of DES and 3DES.

Week of Oct 20th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Network Security
 * Digital Signature and Checksums

Discussion This session was an introduction for the network security class. We talked about the different networks layers and how an attacker can use vulnerabilities in each of these layers.

Week of Oct 27th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Midterm Overview

Discussion In this session we went over the practice exam. We also made a study guide. We used our notes from the class and from the book to come up with a strategy for studying for the exam.

Week of Nov 4th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Network Protocols
 * The Application Layer
 * The Web

Discussion In this session we went in depth over the application layer. We discussed the life-cycle of HTTP request/response. We had an interesting discussion about web 2.0 and web 3.0. We also talked about attacks on the application layer. Starting by DDoS, DoS and XSS attacks. After this we talked about security principles in Linux web servers, starting by setting up a firewall and managing ports.

Week of Nov 11th
Meeting Time
 * Veteran's Day

Week of Nov 18th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Virtualization
 * Port Forwarding
 * Web Servers
 * Remote Access using SSH

Discussion For this session we discussed differences between virtual machines and physical machines. We went through the step necessary for setting up a virtual machine, and analyzed each one of these steps. We also discussed the term "Cloud Computing" and how is it related to the new virtualization technology. Big companies like amazon, provide web infrastructures as a service. By renting a virtual machine at amazon you are adding another layer of security to your server, because amazon will take care of filtering the traffic to the physical machine and leave the process of securing the virtual machine for you. Finally we talk about the usages of SSH in real world. SSH is used for accessing remote Linux machines. It's also used with version control systems like github and bitbucket.

Week of Nov 25th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Homework 5

Discussion The lab part of homework 5 was the center of discussion for this session.

Week of Dec 2nd
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Firewalls
 * Tunneling

Discussion Discussed the basic tunneling concepts and protocols. Each one of the group members described his experience with VPN. We started by discussing the advantages of using VPN and it's effect on performance in large scale applications.

Week of Dec 7th
Meeting Time
 * Met as scheduled

Agenda:
 * Final Review

Discussion This is session was basically to review for the final exam.