6.857: Computer and Network Security (Spring 2016)

Term Projects

Project ideas

We'll be posting project ideas here as the term progresses. Check back for updates.

You should also check out the references page, in particular online proceedings from the linked conferences, for inspiration.

Another source of ideas for your final project might be Phillip Hallam-Baker's new book, The dotCrime Manifesto. Hallam-Baker has compiled a short list of potential projects related to the book. We encourage you to take a look at this page and consider the suggested projects.

Topics from Previous Years

This list has gotten a bit long over the past few years. For now, take a look at the project pitches from 2010 and a list of projects from 2009 and before.

Hints for writing your paper and giving your talk

• How to make a good paper and talk
• How (and How Not) to Write a Good Systems Paper
• Advice on giving an academic talk

This yead's projects

• Security Analysis of Atlas.mit.edu by Caroline Chin, Kelly Liu, Kevin Wang
• Survey of Fully Verifiable Voting Cryptoschemes by Brandon Carter, Ken Leidal, Devin Neal, Zachary Neely
• Reputation Service for Use in Developing Countries by Andrew Thomas Johnston, Eric Young, Kfir Israel Yeshayahu, Shai Ben Nun
• Real Democracy: Post-Election Audits for Range Voting by Berj Chilingirian, Eric Huppert, Zara Perumal
• Classifying Windows Malware with Static Analysis by Benjamin X Xie, Uma M Girkar, Maryann Gong
• Chasm: Fault-Tolerant, Information-Theoretic Secure Cloud Backup using Secret Sharing by Akshay Ravikumar, Alex J. Grinman, Julian Fuchs, Kevin M. Li
• Distributed Cryptographic Mafia by Ashley Wang, Cristhian Ulloa, Ronald Gil
• Privacy Preserving K-Means Clustering by Akshat Bubna, Amartya Shankha Biswas, Dustin Doss, Sarah Scheffler
• Security Analysis of DJI Phantom 3 Standard by Fernando Trujano, Gregory D Beams, Benjamin Chan, Reece A Rivera
• Security Analysis of Gradescope by Catherine T Yun, Emily Zhang, Phillip D. Graham, Rodrigo Lopez Uricoechea
• Security Analysis of Snapchat by Heeyoon Kim, Madeleine Dawson, Wei-En Lee, Yinghua Shen
• Biometric Security by Alexander Stewart, Jeremy Kalas, Patrick A. Lowe, Robert Hunt
• Hardened Dildo.io: A Cryptographically Secure, Usable Matchmaking Service by Jack S Serrino, Douglas Chen, Rajeev Parvathala, Siddharth Seethepalli
• Apollo: A secure, anonymized voting system using the Paillier cryptosystem by Kevin Zhu, Lawrence Sun, Rahul Sridhar, Varun Mohan
• Security Analysis of Patient Portals by Alexandra J Erixxon, Victor E Lopez, David Pineiro
• MicroChain: Transparent Philanthropic Microlending by Aksel Reiten, Allan Daniel D'silva, Francis X. Chen, Kristoffer Birkeland
• Multiparty Homomorphic Encryption by Alexander F Padron, Guillermo J. Vargas
• WhisperKey: Creating a User-Friendly URL Shortener by Eunice Lin, Flora Tan, Linda Wang
• End-To-End Message Encryption for Tinder by Akhil S Nistala, Kevin B Tu, Katherine S Ho
• Security Analysis of Gradescope by Steven Hao, David Wong, David Zheng, Edward Park
• Security Analysis of Boston Symphony Orchestra's Website and Mobile Application by Colleen T Rock, Laura A. D'Aquila, Peitong Duan
• Security Analysis of Piazza by Tania W Yu, Tiange Zhan, Yini Qi
• Hack like no one is watching: using a honeypot to spy on attackers by Kaitlin E Mahar, Cimran Virdi, Helen L Zhou, Teng L Liu
• Security Analysis of Chrome Extensions by Danielle Man, Morgan D. Voss, Ryan Chipman, Tatsiana Ivonchyk
• Security Analysis of Dashlane by Brandon Zeng, Paolo Gentili, Richard Yip, Sarah L Shader
• P0KERface: Coercion Resistant End-to-End Remote Voting by Jennifer E Ramseyer, Victoria F Xia, Dai Yang, Ray Hua Wu
• Hardening UDP Services against Response Amplification Attacks by Hunter Gatewood, Robert M. Sloan
• Updatechain: Using Merkle Trees for Software Updates by Harry Halpin
• Cocoon: Encrypted Substring Search by Brian Saavedra, Eric Chen, Ismael I. Gomez, Jonatan Yucra Rodriguez
• Distributed Homomorphic Voting by Alexander S. Noakes, Fernando R Torija, Trevor Henderson
• An Overview and Analysis of Voice Authentication Methods by Tanya Talkar, Annie J. Shoup, Anubhav Jain, Jodie L. Chen
• Security Analysis of the MIT Pharos Printing Network by Preksha Naik, Emily H Do, Huy Pham
• Implementation and Discussion of Threshold RSA by Hanna X Lee, Brian J Wheatman, Hao Shen
• Marauder's Map: Sniffing MAC addresses in the MIT wireless network by Ali-Amir Aldan, Erjona Topalli, Omer Cerrahoglu, Xavier A Soriano
• Cryptographic Dating by John F Mikhail, Malek Ben Romdhane, Edgar Minasyan, Emad William Farag
• WhatsApp Security Paper Analysis by Calvin Li, Daniel Sanchez, Sean Hua
• Messengr: End-to-End Encrypted Messaging Application With Server-Side Search Capabilities by Marcos Pertierra, Dennis Garcia, Anthony Erb Lugo