Student projects
Open MSc projects
For interested MSc students with a background in security and formal methods, I have MSc thesis projects on security and on privacy. A few examples are listed below.
- Secure document scanning.
- Web privacy.
- Privacy by default for mobile phones.
- Development of a sniping-resistant auction protocol.
- Anonymity Versus Accountability in E-voting.
- Detecting ebook spam.
Current projects
Fighting Fingerprinting for Privacy
Student: Christof FERREIRA TORRES
Level: Bachelor
Supervisor: Dr. Ir. Hugo Jonker
Duration: February - May 2014
Description:
Fingerprinting is a way to identify users that does not depend on
client-side storage (unlike cookies, Flash cookies, etc.).
Fingerprinting is used by both anti-fraud companies and advertising
companies to identify users. Fingerprinting can be done passively, only
based on the interaction between the client and server, or actively,
using client-side scripting to uncover more information about the
client.
In either case, a user who browses the Internet will be open to
fingerprinting by each site (s)he visits. More particularly, any site
that incorporates content from another site -- such as a "share this"
button -- allows the user to be tracked by this second site.
The goal of this project is firstly to analyse how fingerprints are, how
they work, and how they are currently used. Based on that, this project
will develop a FireFox plugin that will improve privacy on the Internet.
Keywords: online privacy, FireFox, fingerprinting, tracking.
Deblurring blurred text
Student: François LANGE
Level: Bachelor
Supervisor: Dr. Ir. Hugo Jonker
Duration: February - May 2014
Description:
Sensitive text (account numbers, personally identifying information,
etc.) is often blurred before being published in newspapers, websites
etc. This project will assume the image was manipulated using a basic
Gaussian blur, as implemented in Photoshop and/or Gimp. The goal of
this project is to be able to undo such blurring.
Prerequisites:
- Strong mathematical background
- Affinity with scripting image manipulation
(Gimp/Photoshop/ImageMagick)
Keywords: deblurring, GIMP
Finished projects
DRM for Privacy
Student: Xinxin ZHU
Level: Bachelor
Supervisor: Dr. Ir. Hugo Jonker
Duration: February 2013 — May 2013
Description:
Smart phones make taking and sharing photos easy. However, not all
photos should be treated publicly. A photo of a wild night in a disco
should be treated differently from a photo taken in broad daylight in
front of a touristic sight. The goal of this project is to develop an
app that enables users to share photos, while ensuring that the shared
photos can only be viewed in circumstances sufficiently similar to the
ones in which the picture was taken (context privacy).
Keywords:
DRM, context-aware privacy, Android.
Carving proprietary communication protocols
Students: Ana GAGGERO and Loïc GAMMAITONI
Level: Master
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Sjouke Mauw and Dr. Ir. Hugo Jonker
Duration: September 2012 — January 2013
Description:
The main topic of this project is the reverse-engineering of
proprietary protocols. The envisioned approach will be to select a
protocol for which a closed-source application is distributed to its
users. An example of such protocols is the Skype protocol. By varying
the input to the application and recording the traffic, traces of the
system can be created. The next step is to extend current methods for
analyzing these traces, in order to recover the underlying
protocol. The final step is to implement these methods in an
(existing) prototype.
Keywords:
carving, reverse-engineering, skype, black box analysis
SpyDroid
Student: Filipe FERREIRA
Level: Bachelor
Supervisor: Dr. Ir. Hugo Jonker
Duration: September 2012 — December 2012
Description:
Recently, researchers found a way to leverage an iPhone's
accelerometers to infer keystrokes. By leaving a phone running a special
measuring app close to the keyboard, the app is able to make reasonable
guesses at what the typed word is.
The goal of this project is to develop a proof-of-concept:
implement this technique for an Android phone, and set up a working
demonstration.
Keywords:
android, password, signal-processing.
Semester projects
I have no semester projects currently on offer.