Term Paper - CSCI 530, Spring 2004

• No grade will be assigned for the proposal.
• You may work on the term paper as soon as your proposal is approved.

For your term paper, you will be asked to write an 5 to 6 page paper, double spaced (about 2000 words), on a topic of your choosing, subject to instructor approval. We are open to a number of different kinds of topics; here are some suggestions:

1. A survey of security techniques in a fairly well-defined area: signature-based intrusion detection, public-key infrastructure, etc.

2. An implementation paper on a theoretical idea, such as a hash algorithm, or an intrusion detection mechanism.

3. A paper based on an idea of your own, modifying a system described in a paper you've read.

For this first phase, do NOT write the entire paper. Instead, write a 1 page proposal, double spaced (about 300 words), describing what it is you plan to write about, as well as justifying it as an interesting topic. If you have any questions regarding this initial phase, please contact the instructors.

Your proposal must include a list of at least 3 papers that you plan to use. This list can spill over to the 2nd page of your proposal.

[BC: Added 2/29/2004]
Due 11:45PM, Wednesday, April 21, 2004. Electronic submissions only. [BC: Added 4/9/2004] Please note that the only allowed formats are ASCII text, PDF, Postscript, and HTML. Please name your submission as either termpaper.txt, termpaper.pdf, termpaper.ps, or termpaper.html, respectively.

By now all of you who submitted your proposal have received feedback from the instructors regarding the suitability of your topic and have been writing for several weeks. In your proposal most of you have prepared a reading list of the papers that you plan to use, though you are free to add to the reading list as you continue to work on the research paper. When considering the addition or deletion of papers please keep in mind some guidlines for references here.

You must now write a paper on the topic you selected in your proposal. The purpose of the research report is for you to become an expert on the topic you selected. The research report should be written so that it conveys information to the reader. When grading the paper we will ask ourselves whether other students in the class might learn about the topic you choose by reading your paper. The paper should contain original analysis of the papers you choose to cover, and ideally suggest directions for future research on the topic.

In writing your paper you should use the several assigned readings from the course as a guide of what is expected of you. In particular, the length and level of detail should be about that of the typical paper from your readings. The real constraint on the length, though, is that your paper should be as long as is necessary to get across the material you wish to convey, and not longer. The best way to accomplish this is to write your paper without concern for its length, then go through the paper sentence by sentence and ask yourself whether the sentence adds information that is relevant to your topic. If not, delete the sentence, or shorten it. You should also use the papers in the readings as a guide to what is expected in terms of properly citing other works.

We realize that some of the students in CSci530 have not been required to submit research papers in other classes that they have taken. For those of you who have not written a research paper before, we urge you to utilize the resources of the Engineering Writing Center or the USC Writing Center.

• ACM conferences on security related topics: (Note: this link is slooooow.)
  • Computer and Communications Security (CCS)
  • Workshop on Multimedia and Security
  • Workshop on Wireless Security (WiSe)
  • New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW)
• IEEE conferences on security related topics:
  • IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy
  • IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security and Privacy (click on Calendar of Events and Call for papers linkes)
  • IEEE Computer Security Foundations Workshop (CSFW)
• USENIX Security Symposium (2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, etc.)
• Mihir Bellare's cryptography and security related conferences page

1. A good paper.

2. Clearly written and technically sound.

3. Does a good job in evaluating the surveyed area or presenting your original idea (depending on which type of paper you are writing). If you are doing a survey paper, don't pick 3 papers that say pretty much the same thing.

4. The paper needs to "say something" or "make a point" (have your friends read it, if they don't "get it", you need to make your point clearer).

5. Demonstration that you have read and understood your references.

Late submissions will receive severe penalties. Due to clock skews, electronic submissions of projects and homeworks assignments will be accepted within 15 minutes after the specified deadlines without penalties. If your submission is beyond the 15 minutes grace period, you will receive 75% of your grade if your submission is 15 minutes late beyond the grace period; you will receive 50% of your grade if your submission is 30 minutes late beyond the grace period; you will receive 25% of your grade if your submission is 45 minutes late beyond the grace period; and you will receive a score of zero otherwise.

All submissions will be timestamped by the submission server and receipts will be issued. Whether your submission arrived to the server by the deadline is determined by the timestamp. Please keep your receipts.