Master dissertations

Dissertations

I am interested in supervising students on the following master theses. I'm also open to consider other titles in my areas of expertise, but please contact me well in advance to ensure adequate planning.

Web malware and spam: analysis and countermeasures

The student taking this thesis will focus on investigating malware and spam targeting Web sites (NOT email). The thesis will include a review of the new types of malware and spam that have been appearing in the last years and will investigate countermeasures. As practical component of this thesis, the student will develop a prototype software for collaborative web spam filtering (having a role similar to the one of pyzor for email spam).
The student needs to have or acquire familiarity with Linux and expertise in programming and networks. The student will also have to familiarise with software used to detect malicious intentions as snort and mod_security.

Proposed first supervisor: Dr. Andres Baravalle
Proposed second supervisor: Prof. Cornelia Boldyreff

Discount Internet security testing

Jacob Nielsen introduced the concept of "discount web usability", by which persons with minimal experience in usability testing can be effectively used during usability tests. This thesis will investigate the possibility of developing a similar approach for Internet security.
The student will build on top of existing methodologies and technologies to develop cost-oriented approaches to internet security testing.

Proposed first supervisor: Dr. Andres Baravalle
Proposed second supervisor: Dr. Haris Mouratidis

Web-based project management using Prince2

This project will develop a web application to support small Prince2 projects. This is a thesis that requires both business and software development skills. The student will have to be familiar with the Prince2 standard and proficient in a sever-side web development environment (either LAMP/WAMP or IIS/SQL Server/ASP.NET). Access to a development box will be provided under those conditions.

Proposed first supervisor: Dr. Andres Baravalle
Proposed second supervisor: Mrs. Tricia Webb

Recent topics

Automated usability testing: analysing the UK web sites

For a number of years researchers have been developed tools for doing automatic web usability testing. The student will be working on an extensive quantitative analysis of web usability, using the the FULL Dmoz catalogue of UK websites (210,000+ web sites) as corpus, focusing on the homepage. As part of the thesis, the student will have to develop software to support the usability testing and for organising the results. The student is expected to investigate the levels of usability in the different areas of the Dmoz database and to answer to questions as: Are there any categories of web sites which have more usability problems? Which ones? Are there any categories in which the usability is typically higher? Why?

Proposed first supervisor: Dr. Andres Baravalle
Proposed second supervisor: Mrs. Tricia Webb

(This thesis has been assigned in February 2010 and has been submitted in May 2010)