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--- ongoing [2010/08/24 15:33] – bil
+++ ongoing [2011/10/14 12:57] (current) – bil
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 ====== Ongoing projects ======
-====== Web-based digital system ======
+====== Web Crawlers Behaving Like Humans: Are We There Yet!?  ======
-**Student**:  Ankit Agrawal
+**Student**:  Dmitry Drinfeld
-**Supervisor**:  John Amanatides
+**Supervisor**: Natalija Vlajic
-__Description__
+**Required Background**: CSE4480 prerequisites
-Build a web-based digital signage system for Bethune College. Some of the technologies that you will be expected to learn/use include Javascript, JQuery, HTML, CSS, and ical/CalDAV. We expect to go open source with this software so that others can use it as well. The deliverables will also include an analysis of what it takes to scale this type of signage campus wide, including provisions for campus alerts/emergency announcements and a prototype for such a system.
-====== Tandem repeat detection using spectral methods ======
-**Student**:  Mohamad Alsabbagh
-**Supervisor**:  Suprakash Datta
 __Description__
-DNA sequences of organisms have many repeated substrings. These are called repeats in Biology, and include both exact as well as approximate repeats. Repeats are of two main types – interspersed repeats (which are spread across a genome) and tandem repeats, which occur next to each other. Tandem repeats play important roles in gene regulation and are also used as markers that have several important uses, including human identity testing.
+Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are recognized as one
+of the most serious threats to today's Internet due to the relative
-Finding tandem repeats is an important problem in Computational Biology. The techniques that have been proposed for it fall into two classes – string matching algorithms and signal processing techniques. In this project, we will explore fast, accurate algorithms for detecting tandem repeats and evaluate the outputs of the algorithms studied by comparing their outputs with those of available packages, including mreps (http://bioinfo.lifl.fr/mreps/), SRF (http://www.imtech.res.in/raghava/srf/) and TRF (http://tandem.bu.edu/trf/trf.html).
+simplicity of their execution and their ability to severely degrade
+the quality at which Web-based services are offered to the end users.
-The student will implement the spectral algorithms used in [1] (one based on Fourier Transforms and one on autoregressive models). He will then make changes suggested by the supervisor, and evaluate the effect of the modifications.
+An especially challenging form of DDoS attacks are the so-called
-Throughout the course, the student is required to maintain a course Web site to report any progress and details about the project.
+Application-Layer DDoS attacks. Namely:
-====== Low-Cost Three-Dimensional Face Scanning System ======
-**Supervisor**:  James Elder
-**Requirements**:  Interest in both hardware and software design at the systems level.
-__Description__
-Low-cost three-dimensional face-scanning systems have a large range of potential applications in security and retail markets.  Our laboratory at York University has recently developed a prototype face-scanning system that has the potential for very low-cost mass production.  This project involves the development of a second-stage prototype that is one-step closer to commercialization.
-The project will involve systems design and development of a specialized real-time 3D face scanner.  A combination of hardware and software design will be required.  The student will work closely with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at York University, as well as researchers at other institutions involved in the project.  The student will develop skills in both hardware and software design, as well as computer-vision techniques.
-For more information on the laboratory: [[http://www.elderlab.yorku.ca]]
-====== Simulation of a 6dof virtual reality tracker ======
-**Supervisor**: Wolfgang Stuerzlinger
-**Required Background**:  General CSE4080 prerequisites
-**Recommended Background**: CSE3431 or equivalent
-__Description__
-Previous work by the supervisor resulted in a novel and highly accurate Virtual Reality tracking system that matches or exceeds the specifications of all competing systems. However, this system works only in 5 or 6-sided immersive display environment.
-This project is the first step towards an adaptation of the technology for more general environments. In particular we target normal rooms and immersive displays with less than 5 screens. The technical work involves adapting the simulation software for the previous device to simulate a new design, and iteratively optimizing that design based on the results obtained.
-====== Programming Multi-Core GPUs with CUDA ======
-**Supervisor**: Franck van Breugel
-**Required background**: General prerequisites
-**Recommended background**: N/A
-__Description__
-CUDA stands for "compute unified device architecture."  It is an architecture to program multicore graphical processing units (GPUs for short).  In the past, these GPUs were only used for graphics. However, CUDA allows us to use these GPUs for other types of computation. Since today's GPUs have hundreds of cores, algorithms can be parallelized and, hence, run often much faster.
-The aim of this project is to get familiar with GPUs and to study how to program them.
-More details can be found at: [[http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~franck/projects/cuda.html]]
-(this link is only accessible from machines within the domain yorku.ca.)
+  - In Application-Layer DDoS attacks, the attackers utilize a flood of legitimate-looking Layer-7 network sessions (i.e., sessions that are generally hard to detect and/or filter out by a firewall or an IDS system)
+  - Increasingly, these sessions comprise HTML requests generated by a cleverly programmed crawler that executes a semi-random walk over the web site links, thereby attempting to appear as a legitimate human visitor.
+The goal of this project is to investigate the state of the art in
+malicious web crawler design. In particular, the project will look
+into the challenges of designing a smart-DDoS-crawler from the
+attacker point of view - one of these challenges being the estimation
+of web-page popularity assuming no a priori access to the web-logs
+of the victim web-site.