Information Warfare (95-803)
Home Syllabus and Schedule Announcements Homeworks Grading Humor Links Spring 2011 Comments? (c) Copyright 2000-2011 The Heinz College, CMU		Final Paper Information Students are expected to identify a topic related to the course for a 10-20 page final paper. They should send a one-paragraph non-binding description of their intended topic to the instructor no later than the start of week 5 of the course. Joint work on the final paper (where no more than two students work together) will be permitted only with advance permission of the instructor and identification of areas of concentration for each student. Example Topics There is one overarching goal in your term paper: Demonstrate your mastery of the concepts discussed in the course. Whatever topic you pick (and below are only a few of the many, many possible topics), make sure your paper reflects your knowledge gain during the course. You should probably also note that the "expected" length is about 10-15 pages (for single-author papers). OK, Here are some possible topics: A strategic or technical evaluation of recent major cyber-attacks. Offensive strategies embodied in recent attack tools and the implications of these strategies for defenders. Defensive strategies to deal with warhol worms Defensive strategies applied to the protection of a specific organization (a company, the Heinz school, etc.) Role of specific technologies (firewall, IDS, encryption, PKI, etc.) in a defensive strategy A strategic evaluation of passive network defenses vs. active network defenses A defensive strategy for a small business, academic department or charitable organization (can be real, or fictionalized from experience) A review of the strategic difficulties in defending the Internet. Refer to this article as a starting point.