Here are my project archives. For information on research which has been published, please see my publications section.

Vulnerability Analysis

The study of system vulnerabilities has long been obscured by a lack of precision and clarity. Providing a formal model for vulnerability analysis may help remove this ambiguity. However, it is unclear how security fits into the classic formal model for modern computers - the Universal Turing Machine.

This work provides a formal model for vulnerability analysis based on the Turing machine. We then use this model to address another need - a robust vulnerability classification framework.

Preliminary versions of this work appear in the technical reports "A Practical Formalism for Vulnerability Comparison" [alt], "Tree Approach to Vulnerability Classification" [alt], and "Protocol Vulnerability Analysis" [alt].

SOA Security (PL3/EAL4)

The needs of the United States military and intelligence community are evolving to require greater flexibility, adaptability, and interoperability across entities and domains. As such, these entities are turning to service-oriented architectures (SOA) as a means to address these evolving requirements.

However, many of the qualities which make SOAs flexible and deployable compound the complexity of securing service-oriented architectures to meet the strict requirements of these critical environments. The purpose of this document is to identify the security requirements of service-oriented architectures which handle intelligence information with PL3/EAL4 requirements.

This work is being done on behalf of the Nebraska University Consortium on Information Assurance for Lockheed Martin.

aNETmation

This project focuses on exploring the use of animation to view the structure of large or highly-connected networks. aNETmation is implemented as a Java Applet and utilizes the Java Universal Network/Graph Framework (JUNG) libraries.

This was my project for the Network Theory and Applications course I took in Spring 2007 with Professor D'Souza.

The Marking Assumption

In one of the earliest publications on fingerprinting, Wagner defines "perfect fingerprinting" to include schemes such that any alteration to the marked object that makes the fingerprint unrecognizable must necessarily make the object unusable. Several modern fingerprinting schemes are based on the assumption that perfect fingerprinting of digital information is possible. This paper explores this assumption, and those schemes which depend on it.

This was my project for the Cryptography for E-Commerce course I took in Winter 2005 with Professor Franklin.

Mind and Computation

This paper extends the course discussion on the possible relationship between mind and computation, and presents several models of computation.

This was my project for the Mind and Machines (NPB 263) course I took in Spring 2004 with Professor Olshausen.

FreeBSD User/Kernel Bugs

Cqual is a type qualifier inference tool used to detect multiple classes of security vulnerabilities. This tool has been used to detect format string vulnerabilities, deadlock, and user/kernel pointer bugs in Linux. In this paper we discuss our extension of this work towards finding user/kernel pointer bugs in FreeBSD.

This was my project with S. Whalen for the Software Security course I took in Fall 2004 with Professor Hao Chen.

Autonomous Multi-Robot Foraging

Robots designed to gather resources from hostile or remote environments enable advanced research in a variety of fields. This process of foraging is demonstrated in the animal kingdom, where species have evolved to collect resources essential to life within their environment. We designed such a foraging robot, simulated using Matlab software. We discuss our choice of architecture, sensors, and algorithms, along with our results and proposals for future work.

This was my project with S. Whalen for the Autonomous Robotics (MAE298) course I took in Spring 2003 with Professor Joshi.

State of Steganography

Steganography has received considerable press in recent years, mostly due to the war on terror. This paper discusses the state of steganography by examining its current uses, limitations, and implications. In addition, this paper addresses the relationship between steganography, steganalysis and terrorism.

This was my project for the Computer Security (ECS235) course I took in Spring 2003 with Professor Bishop.

HCS Clustering Algorithm

This is a presentation on the HCS (Highly Connected Subgraphs) Clustering Algorithm, as described in Ron Shamir's A Clustering Algorithm Based on Graph Connectivity.

This was my project for the Modeling Gene Regulation (ECS289A) course I took in Winter 2003 with Professor Filkov.