Group Assignment
This is a group assignment. Form a group of 2 or 3 students within your tutorial slot
ONLY.
You will present this work as a group .
FULL MARK: 25 MARKS (Report: 18 Marks. Presentation: 7 Marks)
Overview
This assignment is a mini research project. You will select a specific area in cyber security, and each group need to read at least 3 technical papers (for the group of 3 students) or at least 2 papers (for the group of 2 students) about your selected area. Then you will discuss and maybe analyse these papers based on their approaches, contributions, methods, limitations, and any other criteria.
You will submit your presentation materials and the group report together in a ZIP file. Each group only needs to submit one ZIP file, by any one of the group member.
You will do research on one of the cyber security areas to gain a better understanding of the state-of-the-art in this field. You will write your findings in a high quality report (no more than 6 pages, 11pt font, single column, normal margin, default line spacing). This part must demonstrate your ability to study and discuss peer-reviewed journal articles or conference papers, carry out in-depth analysis, and arrive at substantial conclusions. You will also present your findings in your Tutorial slot (maximum 15 minutes for each group including Q&A).
Step 1 – You need to select only one of the following topics:
Cryptology
Applied cryptography
Lightweight security
Database security
Blockchain or Cryptocurrency
Step 2 – After selecting your research area, you need to read and research the related journal articles or conference papers published on or after 2010 from the following list:
Journal Article:
IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing
Journal of Cryptology
Conference Paper:
Crypto
Eurocrypt
Asiacrypt
Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy (ACISP)
Applied Cryptography & Network Security (ACNS)
Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC)
International Conference on Practice and Theory of Public-Key Cryptography (PKC)
RSA Conference Cryptographers’ Track (CT-RSA)
Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC)
European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS)
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS)
ACM Asia Conference on Computer & Communications Security (ASIACCS)
USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security)
Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS)
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P)
You may find your selected papers from the online databases in Library: IEEE, ScienceDirect, Springer, ACM, ProQuest, IOS Press, or Scopus.
You will select at least 2 related papers (if your group contains 2 members) or 3 related papers (if your group contains 3 members).
Step 3 – After selecting your papers, you need to identify each paper’s contributions, the proposed approach/method, the research issues/challenges it addresses, main findings and finally any remaining open issues. You need to read, understand and analyse each paper and provide a professional and brief description for each:
The research challenges and issues that each paper addressing (there might be more than one paper addressing the same issue)
The paper contributions, what approach/method/model they are proposing and developing to address those challenges. You need to briefly describe their proposed approaches/methods/models, avoiding technical details and jargons.
What are the main findings and results of each paper (usually discussed after the evaluation section), and any open issues for further research, if any.
Step 4 – You will consolidate all the results of step 3 into one single research report (per group) following the specified guidelines below.
You need to follow the following structure:
- Papers Publication Details: titles, authors, publication venue (journal name, journal volume number, page number, year; conference name, page number, year) (0.5 mark)
- Introduction: a brief description on what your papers are about. (2 marks)
- Brief Summary:
- a) Discuss the challenges/issues that these papers focus on; (3 marks)
- b) Briefly and clearly describe the technical contribution of each paper (that is, how the paper has outperformed the other schemes in the past, in terms of functions; and/or security; and/or efficiency etc.); (3 marks)
- c) Summarise the approach of the new findings and results of evaluation/experiments. (4 marks)
- d) Add your judgement on their results at the end. (e.g. If the papers address the same problem, here you need to compare how their improvements are different or which approach outperforms the other one.) (3 marks)
To write this section, use paragraphs rather than bullets or other styles, and make sure the paragraphs have a logical and consistent flow.
- Conclusion – Conclude by saying what paper was about, briefly discussing the main or interesting findings and making your final point. (2 marks)
- References (this will not be counted in the page limit) – list the details of all the references you used in preparation of the report. (0.5 mark)
Step 5 – You will present your findings in your Week 12 tutorial slot. You can have maximum
15 minutes (including Q&A) per group to present your finding. Each group only needs to make one presentation. Each student needs to present their corresponding part. (7 marks)
Submission Requirements:
- An Assessment Cover Sheet for the group
- The presentation material (in pdf format)
- The report (in pdf format)
Note: Hand-written report is NOT accepted. No mark will be given to any hand-written report.