For my final year project in Forensic Computing BSc I have a few ideas for project but would like some advice of possible titles I could go into with the areas I mention.
About my programming skills I am very strong PHP coder and medium programmer in C. Not very good at networking or hardware. I am more of a programmer.
Web Browser Session Restore Forensics*
My first idea after researching around is something to do with web browser forensics which seems an area in need of more research. I learned so far that browsers create a session files (different for each browser) that store data using javascript objects to enable restoring a session. I also know browser leave information stored in unallocated space ie google queries typed.
There are also various tools such as CCleaner which allow you to delete browser session files etc although not entirely. I was thinking maybe creating a web browser tool of sorts similar to what these programs do but this may be complex?
Also found this area could go into phone forensics (although I am very inexperienced in using phones, dont use phones at all so maybe not this). Also this could go into windows registry forensics as well? Any ideas in possible areas/titles for web browser forensics would be appreciated.
***PHP application security (strongest area)****
Ideally I would like to think of a project around my strongest skill PHP. I already know all about writing secure web applications and performing pen tests. Although I am struggling on ideas to actual make this into a year project apart from just making a secure website which is not enough. Any ideas on a title I could put forward around PHP application security. I would not find programming anything in PHP a problem or learning more into security of PHP.
Thanks very much for any ideas guys. I have tried to provide all my research so far but would appreciate a nudge now into putting together a project proposal title that would be challenging'ish and last a year not just 2 days. Thought this would be the best place to go to compared to other forums on the Internet.
Thanks very much for any info, really appreciate it
Darren
How about parsing of web server log files in PHP, Apache and IIS. Maybe with a view to,
1) Automatically identifying attacks on a web site (e.g SQL injection attempts, E-mail address scrapper bot, auto-spam bots attempting site logins, cross site scripting). And producing a list of IP addresses for banning.
2) Filtering the logs to extract the behaviour of 1 visitor over time.
Thanks for your reply.
Your suggestion is sort of a honeypot system using PHP. M fear with this idea is that my supervisor thinks its too vague and maybe PHP is not the "best" language he says. He said think of a metric to define "best". So, maybe this idea is not the very useful in PHP.
I really stuck not trying to get ideas around this still using PHP but it seems really limited area around creating a year long project. I need a project that would not be too difficult as I am not clever enough to get a 1st more likely a 22 .
I have just briefly done some research around forensic significance of windows restore points but mainly just reading what registry in Windows XP does but not really sure for a specific area to go into. I know that restore points revert only system files back to the specific date but not users documents like word etc. Trying to perhaps push this into a project idea. I was thinking maybe buying a used second hand hard drive of ebay and trying to gather data of it but may be ethical issues around this project to allow me to do it
.
Any other ideas would be appreciated to try to get me towards a project title.
Thanks very much