Expert: Carolyn Meinel - 12/17/2004

Question
Hi

I am considering to do an mphil in internet security and was woundering if you could suggest some intersting topics that i could look into. I understand that interest varies from person to person, but what do you think is a interesting topic to research.

Thanks

Answer
Congratulations on your ambition to go for a Master of Philosphy in computer security. So many people settle for a simple professional accreditation that takes a week of classes and a multiple choice test (I'm thinking of the CISSP).

One of the hottest topics in computer security is the distributed threat posed by the millions of "zombie" computers connected to the Internet. For example, experts at Sophos estimate that ten percent of emails today (Dec. 17) are infected with the W32/Zafi-D worm, which was discovered this Tuesday posing as a Christmas greeting. This worm creates a back door on every infected computer, adding them to the legions of zombies.

These zombies are now in widespread use by organized crime for extorting businesses through denial of service attacks, running fraudulent ecommerce sites, and tricking people into logging into fake bank sites, thus giving away their usernames and passwords to their bank accounts.

You can read more on this threat, including links to further information, at my website, http://happyhacker.org/gtmhh/phishing1.shtml

If you can come up with solutions to this problem in your planned research for an MPhil, you would do the world a great service.