Research Topics (for students)
Here I maintain a list of cybersecurity research topics for students who would like to take on the challenge. Some topics are more suitable for students with a strong scientific inclination whereas others are more on the applied side. Feel free to reach out to me if you would like to research one of these topics under my supervision. I am also open to hear research ideas from students at my or other universities. Here is a list of my past an current students.
In the area of control systems, the concept of intelligent control refers to the use of AI techniques to control dynamic systems in process engineering. For example, industrial control systems, robots, unmanned vehicles, among others. One of these techniques is Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). Traditional applications of ANNs (e.g., identification of objects in images) have been successfully exploited through Adversarial Machine Learning techniques. However, it is not clear if these techniques can be applied against ANNs in control systems and what the consequences of such attacks would be.
Malicious domains refer to web domains that are intentionally created or compromised with the purpose of carrying out malicious activities. These activities can include spreading malware, phishing attacks, distributing malicious content, and conducting various forms of cybercrime.
The goal of this project is to categorize malicious domains in the Costa Rican TLD according to the aforementioned purposes. In this way, exposing the types of (cyber)crimes leveraging .cr domains.
A generic definition of a smart city [1] implies modern technologies typically deployed by public bodies in urban areas with the intent of improving the inhabitants’ quality of life. Deploying such technologies can be costly, requiring the installation of, e.g., monitoring sensors throughout the city, followed by management efforts throughout their lifetime. This is also a limiting approach, since you can only offer the smart city services supported by the sensors that you have deployed.
Cookies are small pieces of data stored on a user’s web browser by websites they visit. These data files are designed to hold information about the user’s interactions with the website, allowing the site to recognize and remember the user on subsequent visits.
Cookies serve various purposes, such as:
Session Management: Cookies help maintain user sessions, allowing websites to remember users as they navigate different pages or perform actions on a site.
Security weaknesses in software are the main technical problem in cybersecurity. Its timely identification is key to developing software capable of resisting cyberattacks. Static source code analysis (with large numbers of false positives) and dynamic application analysis (with limited coverage of possible execution paths) have been attempted for decades. This project consists of a type of static analysis that, instead of analyzing the source code, will analyze a textual description of the code generated automatically through AI techniques (e.
Applying security patches is a fundamental stage in vulnerability management. However, it is one of the most complex stages to execute because it generally involves the temporary suspension of services while the patch is applied and, in addition, there is a risk of breaking compatibility with other associated systems. These issues are even more relevant when it comes to critical systems that offer 24/7 service. The idea of this project is to define a methodology to apply security patches, minimizing service suspension time and ensuring compatibility between multiple systems that must be updated.