Cyber second year

Courses

ITX8080 Simulation of Attacks and Defense

ITV8060 Computer Network Security (4 EAP) is available and free on Fall for cybersecurity 2. year students and can be moved to Specialization module after you have got a grade.

ITX8071 Cyber Defense Monitoring Solutions replaces the course ITX8070 Log Mining and Disc Forensics.

ITX8040 Cyber Defence seminar (spring semester)

ITX8042 Malware

ITX8042 Malware II

ITX8062 Information Systems Mass Attacks and Defence

ITX8063 Information Systems Hacking Attacks and Defence

ITX8050 Special Course in Cyber Security

The courses are free to cybersecurity RE students (the invoices are cancelled) and can be moved to Specialization module after you get a grade.

Writing a Thesis

Topic and advisor

Almost any professor and lecturer you have met in your curricula can act as an advisor of you thesis. Some of them have some open problems suitable for doing research and writing a thesis, but many don't have a topic to offer. It is usually more helpful to have an initial idea of a topic of your thesis and ask someone with interests in the related field to advise you. You can have an advisor not related to the university, but he can act only as a co-advisor and you need to agree to somebody related to the curricula or the leading institute of the curricula to be an official advisor.

When refining topic ideas, make sure it has a clear connection with cyber security.

The topics or keywords below are offered by potential (co-)supervisors. The list is updated as new offers emerge.

From the TUT IT office

Infrastructure

Migrating TUT Campus LAN to IPv6; Edgars Zigurs
Implementing a freeware SIEM solution in TUT; Edgars Zigurs
Campus WiFi quality and signal strength modeling (3D); Edgars Zigurs

Development

electronic door signs, room calendars, etc.; Thomas Lepik
VoIP solutions - softphone, integration with existing information systems; Thomas Lepik
integrating last generation BMS (Building Management System); Thomas Lepik
the student view of OIS (usability, security, re-design); Enn Rebane

From Arnis Paršovs, University of Tartu, arnis@ut.ee

Topic: On-the-fly encryption for car DVR

Task: Implement on-the-fly encryption functionality for Prestigio car DVR (by patching publicly available firmware - possibly by hooking write calls). Use of hybrid encryption is recommended, however, implementation of scrambling (e.g., XORing with a fixed key) might already be considered success. Describe the threat model, how it was done and how to use it.

Topic: Parallel tallying for Estonian i-voting

Task: Describe security risks that could be reduced if election observers would be allowed to perform vote verification and counting using their computers. Propose changes to the i-voting procedures and develop parallel tallying reference implementation and test data set. Analyse new risks introduced and propose counter measures.

Topic: Perfect Secrecy for TLS

Task: Create an Internet Draft proposing a TLS cipher suite or extension that would ensure perfect secrecy using one-time pad. Develop a proof-of-concept patch for OpenSSL/mod_ssl and Firefox. Analyze the security and usability, describe the use cases.

Topic: TLS Session Resumption and ID card Authentication

Task: Study how TLS session resumption is implemented in browsers. Measure and compare the performance improvement TLS session resumption provides. Measure the performance impact if the TLS client certificate authentication is performed using a smart card.

TREsPASS project

Research project: Technology-supported Risk Estimation by Predictive Assessment of Socio-technical Security

The project is also suitable for PhD research, following the completion of the Master's studies. Contacts: Dr Peeter Laud, Dr Jan Willemson

Formal Requirements and recommendations

There are no strict rules on formatting your thesis. Some general advices that are good to follow for a master thesis:

a title page, an author declaration, an annotation in english and estonian, a list of contents, and references are required in the thesis
around 50 pages + appendixes if needed
Times New Roman (or similar), font size 12, 1.5 spacing used for the ordinary text
headings are numbered and no more than 3 levels used
2 copies are submitted, you will get one back afterwards.

The Cyber Security Seminar is designed to provide advice on the thesis requirements and writing process to Cyber Security Master's students.

Dates (2013 spring)

May 13 deadline for application of defending the thesis
May 27, 9.00 - 11.00 and 15.00 - 17.00, submission of the thesis (two copies to ICT-411)
June 3 (Schedule) defenses of the thesis (presentation 15 minutes + discussion)
After defense, please, visit Dean's Office for more information about final formalities
June 19 - 28 final ceremony
Upload your thesis if you would like to have it public

Your advisor may have different suggestions, but if they don't say anything then you should plan to have a first draft ready by the end of April.