M.Sc. Thesis Prizes

The Information Security Group offers a number of prizes every year to M.Sc. candidates who produce outstanding M.Sc. theses. These prizes are a reward for the hard work that these candidates have put into their projects. There are two different types of prizes currently offered by the group:

The David Lindsay Prize

The David Lindsay Prize is awarded every year by the British Computer Society Computer Security Specialist Group to the project that best addresses innovative applications of Information Security. It is open to all M.Sc. and B.Sc. projects which focus on information security and the decision is made by British Computer Society Computer Security Specialist Group.

Recent winners of the David Lindsay prize include:

2011: Practical Implementation of Grouping Proof for RFID by Antony Bills
2010: Efficiency of Zero-Knowledge Proofs of Knowledge Identification Protocols on Smart Cards by Andreas Grunert
2009: Investigating the Use of Static Analysis Techniques to Detect Obfuscation in Web-Based Content Attacks by Tony Broad
2008: Securing Mobile Voice End to End: Design Challenges in Developing Commercially Acceptable Solutions by John Wigley
2007: The Impact of Virtualisation Upon Forensics Procedures by Matthew Hanrahan
2006: An Investigation into the Information Security Threats faced by a Small Network by David Thomas Hawks
2005: (Artificially) Immune Based (Hybrid) Intrusion and Detection and Prevention Systems by Georgiadis Filippos
2004: An Open Framework for Simplifying the Use and Development of Source Code Analysis Tools by Nessim Kisserli

Search Security Awards

A number of M.Sc. projects are chosen to receive Search Security awards. These awards are given to those projects which best present research in an area of information security of interest to information security managers and professionals. These projects are re-written as short articles for a general audience and published online at SearchSecurity.co.uk. The full projects are published as a Mathematics Department technical reports.

Recent winners of the Search Security awards include:

2012

A Novel Card-Present Payment Scheme using NFC Technology by Albert Attard
A Pragmatic Policy-Driven XSS Protection Framework by Joseph Bugeja
A Study on how a Cloud Service Provider can offer adequate security to its customers by Robert Farrugia
Malware Armoring: The case against incident related binary analysis by Steve Hendrikse
Security in the cloud: The threat of coexist with an unknown tenant on a public environment by Jacobo Ros
Can PCI DSS compliance be achieved in a cloud environment? by Patrick Durkin

2011

Hypervisor security: New techniques for securing virtual machines by Fotios Tsifountidis
Compromising emanations: Tactics for electronic surveillance detection by Paul Frankland
Quantum cryptography tutorial: Is quantum key distribution realistic? by Sheila Cobourne
Patient confidentiality policy for UK electronic health records by Stephen Elgar
Ministry of Defence security: IT information assurance in the MOD by Paul Shanes

2010

The real cost of PCI DSS compliance by Martin Bradley
DNS security best practices to prevent DNS poisoning by Richard Agar
Internet safety for kids: Tips on computer security awareness training by Clara Brady
Challenges and solutions: Security of vehicular ad-hoc networks by Abdul Kalam Aboobaker
A new approach to fighting varied types of cybercrime cases by Anna Cevidalli
How to improve pharmaceutical data management with the TCG TPM by Stephen Khan
Raising the efficacy of a Trusted Platform Module security device by Andrew Lee-Thorp
Risk Metrics: Measuring the effectiveness of an IT security control by Jonathan Pagett
Threat assessment model: Testing open source software for security by Yoav Aner

2009

Performance Analysis of Authentication Protocols in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET) by Abdul Kalam Kunnel Aboobaker
The Domain Name System (DNS): Security challenges and improvements by Richard John Matthew Agar
Securing the Sage Notebook by Yoav Aner
Security Awareness for Children by Clara Brady
Leveraging The Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Countering Organised Crime by Anna Cevidalli
Business to Business Data Sharing using Trusted Computing by Stephen S. Khan
Improving Residual Risk Management through the Use of Security Metrics by Jonathan Pagett
Attestation in Trusted Computing: Challenges and Potential Solutions by Andrew Lee-Thorp

2008

Interdomain Routing Security (BGP4) by Rostom Zouaghi
Maximing the Effectiveness of Information Security Awareness by Geordie Stewart
Information Security Awareness: An Innovation Approach by Carlos Orozco Corona
Fuzzing for Software Vulnerability Discovery by Toby Clarke
Applying Misuse Case to Improve the Security of Information Systems by John Ruck
Buffer Overflows in Microsoft Windows Environment by Parvez Anwar
Management of Risks Associated with De-Perimetrisation by Kwok Keeng Lee
Digital Rights Management: Towards a Balance between Copyright Rights and Fair Use Exceptions by Christian Bonnici
Extending Secure Execution Environments Beyond the TPM by Talha Tariq

2007

Intrusion Detection and Prevention: Immunologically Inspired Approaches by Devid Pipa
Metamorphic Virus: Analysis and Detection by Evgenios Konstantinou
Copy Protection of Computer Games by Richard Hyams
Forensics of BitTorrent by Jamie Acorn
Securing Financially Sensitive Environments with OpenBSD by Nicholas Humphrey
Cheating and Virtual Crime in Massively Mulitplayer Online Games by Rahul Joshi
Review and Analysis of Current and Future European e-ID Schemes by Siddhartha Arora
Information Security Training & Awareness by Monique Hogervorst
Computer Security: A Machine Learning Approach by Sandeep Sabnani
Proposed Model for Outsourcing PKI by Christoper McLaughlin
Network Covert Channels: Review of Current State and Analysis of Viability of the use of X509 Certificates for Covert Communications by Carlos Scott
Detecting Pandemic and Epidemic Incidents through Network Telescopes: Security Analysis by Fotis Gagadis
Tigger Team -- A Novel Methodology to Manage Business Risk by Ian McKinnon