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Posted by black0fire@gmail.com on May 24, 2007, 1:53 am
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I'm a computer science undergraduate student interested in doing my
final year project regarding viruses. The project needs to be done in
a team of 4 students and will go on for about an year, and it has to
have both academic value and and end product to present. Though I
really wish to do a project in the area of viruses, detection of
viruses, mutaion engines, etc, I can't find or think of any suitable
project ideas that would suit the criteria. So I wonder if anyone can
present some ideas that would make a suitable project?
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Posted by Dustin Cook on May 25, 2007, 1:36 am
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> I'm a computer science undergraduate student interested in doing my
> final year project regarding viruses. The project needs to be done in
> a team of 4 students and will go on for about an year, and it has to
> have both academic value and and end product to present. Though I
> really wish to do a project in the area of viruses, detection of
> viruses, mutaion engines, etc, I can't find or think of any suitable
> project ideas that would suit the criteria. So I wonder if anyone can
> present some ideas that would make a suitable project?
>
>
Hmm. What about a Malware scanner? You can find samples to study easily
enough. The academic value will be in learning the details of the windows
registry, and file system as well as what various system files do and are
used for. The end product will be the scanner that's able to detect and
succesfully remove the samples you'll find if you look around.
--
Dustin Cook
Author of BugHunter - MalWare Removal Tool - v2.2c
email: bughunter.dustin@gmail.com.removethis
web..: http://bughunter.it-mate.co.uk
Pad..: http://bughunter.it-mate.co.uk/pad.xml
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Posted by Virus Guy on May 25, 2007, 9:53 am
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> I'm a computer science undergraduate student interested in doing
> my final year project regarding viruses.
What school would devote so much of an undergraduate curriculum to
viruses?
What textbooks are even available that give detailed operational
information to recent virus families?
Viruses are product and OS specific and don't justify credible
academic study, let alone at the undergraduate level. Viruses are the
result of attempts to leverage known vulnerabilities in commercial
software. Such specificity does not make them worthy of academic
study. Viruses do not employ concepts that you would normally
implement in non mal-code for legit reasons.
How much are you paying for your computer science tuition? What
employers are going to be impressed that you spent a year of your CS
degree fooling around with pseudo-viral code?
There are far more basic concepts in computer science that you should
be learning.
The only thing you should be learning in computer science with respect
to malware is how to write code that is not vulnerable to malware,
such array bounds checking, correct parameter parsing and handling,
etc.
If colleges and universities integrate the "study" of viruses into
their course material, then why not the study of satellite card
hacking? DSS and AACS video hacking and decryption?
Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's science.
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Posted by kurt wismer on May 26, 2007, 11:55 am
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[snip]
> Viruses are product and OS specific and don't justify credible
> academic study,
tell that to fred cohen...
--
"it's not the right time to be sober
now the idiots have taken over
spreading like a social cancer,
is there an answer?"
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Posted by Nick FitzGerald on May 26, 2007, 8:31 pm
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> [snip]
>> Viruses are product and OS specific and don't justify credible
>> academic study,
>
> tell that to fred cohen...
Virus Guy is mostly right there, though he somewhat overstated
the case that there is nothing of academic worth in studying
computer virus, or more generally malware, related issues.
That said however, note the dearth of _significant_ virus or
malware related PhD theses presented since Fred's. When it
comes to the theoretically significant aspects of computer
viruses, Fred pretty wrote the book and put the _academic_
field to bed all in one move.
Of course, various "populists" have come along since, offering
various courses of questionable academic and/or pedagogical
value, but which I'm sure have produced nice economic returns
to their hosting institutions because of the "sexiness" of
(superficially) studying hot-button topics. However, such
economic "success" does not make those studies worthwhile. If
you need to spend more than a few minutes of your entire life
pondering the theoretical, academic and practical significance
of "runs arbitrary code on the target computer", then CS is
clearly the wrong field for you...
--
Nick FitzGerald
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