tim1784’s blog

(Day 07 – 01 -2010)
Today, I had a meeting with Dr. Matthew Wright, the faculty member that I would be working under for the REU project. He started by giving me a brief introduction of two broad areas of study. Both of the projects seemed so different, yet equally so cool. After, he ask me what would I be more interested in. I was shocked because I had not known much about either and I was expecting him to give me a list of objectives that he would require me to finish by week one, week two, etc. After I choose security over networks, he assigned a date that we would meet again so I could learn more. The meeting adjourned and we went into another room where standing in front of me, were about seven graduate students. I meet each one and then went home to ready for the start of my program.

(Day 07-02-2010)
Today, I began reading a document called “RAINBOW: A Robust and Invisible Non-Blind Watermark for Network Flows”. This document had words that I had never even seen before. Some of the words I could hardly pronounce. The document was a mountain to climb. I was very overwhelmed. When I finally reached the middle of the article, I was overcome by some of the most complicated mathematical equations I had ever seen in lifetime. I had to take a break.

(Day 07-03-2010)
Day off

(Day 07-04-2010)
Today was a waste of a day. I battled my way through understanding the math problems on my own. After looking and trying to understand two math problems across the time span of two hours? I know that I would need help. I plan on going to the math clinic tomorrow. For the mean time, I skipped the math problems and finish the back half of the document. I knew that I would have to present what I understood from the paper this Thursday. Fortunately enough, the back half of the article was straight forward and very understandable.

(Day 07-05-2010)
Today was a good day. I went to the math clinic and found a tutor there that was willing enough to give me the time of day. I spent about 3-4 hours with him. It was worth it though, because I now have a grasp of what is going on in the paper.

(Day 07-06-2010)
Today I began starting on another article suggested by Dr. Wright. This was a wrong idea because I feel as though I am losing grasp of the article I had spent the last couple days on. The article that I had started reading was an article representing “SNEAK”. So far, I all I know that SNEAK is a hacker scheme that had the ability to crack multiple hacker detection schemes. Most interesting of all, is that it was created especially to defeat the RAINBOW detection scheme.

(Day 07-07-2010)
Today was the day I presented my understanding of the RAINBOW article. I knew from the second that I started, that I had made a mistake by starting to read a conflicting article. The presentation was unstable and everywhere. Dr. Wright was very understanding though. He corrected me when I was wrong and thanked me for my time. Although I felt bad for doing a “bad” job, Dr. Wright seems to be a really good to research considering his personality. Lastly, I am definitely going back to reread the RAINBOW before I lose everything that I had read.

(Day 07-08-2010)
Today, I read everything in the RAINBOW article again with the exception of the mathematical section. What is AINBOW? RAINBOW is a hacker detection that attempts to use both passive and active detection to create RAINBOW. In passive detection, packet timings are observed as they flow upstream and downstream. In active detection, typically watermarking detection, a special watermark is placed on data flowing through one stream and the differences are analyzed as the data flows down the other stream. With RAINBOW, is sends a certain number of unwatermarked data and watermarks the other half. By doing this with the implementation of cross-correlation, the results yield less information lost and results display a lowering in uncertainty.

(Day 07-09-2010)
The mathematical formulas all together dealt with a number of different things. The initial formulas dealt with watermarking data. The later formulas were purely for data analysis.

(Day 07-10-2010)
Today, I talked with Dr. Wright and mentioned that I still had gained no preference. It all seemed so interesting to me. His responded that I seemed to have an interest, but that I must narrow it down because no one can research everything. Even after telling him that I would do whatever he needed me to do, he told me to keep reading. I think know that I am dealing with a different man, he seems to not demand me maybe as a way for me to inspire myself.

(Day 07-11-2010)
Day Off, preparing for group meeting tomorrow

(Day 07-12-2010)
Today, I did two things. I first attended a meeting starting at 11:30 AM. Here was a show and tell day with Tara, Austin, Prateek, and I. We all took turns showing what we have been working up and what we expect to do next. When it came to my turn, I presented my SNEAK article, but when it came to what I was going to do next I had nothing. I asked the group what I could to actually start getting my hands on something other than readings. They provided with important advice. Austin was running experiments that were made by someone in order to analyze the results. After I went to the ethics workshop sponsored by the REU program. This was a round table discussion about personal moral and ethical situations that we, each REU student, had experienced personally in our lives. I referenced certain high school situations. Unfortunately, almost everyone else made reference to very similar things. So I felt as though my personal story was not that special anymore.

(Day 07-13-2010)
Day Off

(Day 07-14-2010)
Today, I prepared for the meeting by marking details in my articles.

(Day 07-15-2010)
At the team meeting, I was able to sit down and listen to Tara(my supervisor), Austin, and Prateek and hear what they were working on. Austin was running experiments that were made by someone else to analyze the effects. Tara was working with high latency networks. Prateek was translating a certain code segment from C to Python (these are both programming languages). He is doing this in order to make this document more accessible to others. I, at the time, still had no idea about what I wanted to do, but they told me that my grasp of the knowledge was good. After that, I attended the ethics workshop. That was a round table discussion about personal moral and ethical situations that we, each REU student, had experienced personally in our lives. I referenced certain high school situations. Unfortunately, most everyone else made reference to very similar things. So, my story did not seem as special.

(Day 07-17-2010)
Today, an email went out stating that there was going to be a meeting next Thursday. This was an exciting turn of events because now that I knew how Dr. Wright worked, I thought it would be a great opportunity to surprise him with an incredible proposal. I also knew that there was almost nothing that I, being an undergraduate, could say to a man with his doctrine that would make become surprised to any extent. I remembered though that Dr. Wright said that if I needed any more good references, then that I could look up the references in the papers that I had just read to gain more insight. So, I started reading some more articles in attempt to impress.

(Day 07-18-2010)
Today was a depressing day for research. I read an entire article to find it close but still a bit too irrelevant.

(Day 07-19-2010)
I found a great article today. It is something that could exploit covert channels. This is something that Dr. Wright had mentioned in my first meeting with him. This article seems to be promising.

(Day 07-20-2010)
Day Off

(Day 07-21-2010)
The article is named “Keyboards and Cover Channels”. After my presentation, I will record my findings after I have reviewed the article some more.

(Day 07-22-2010)
The article was called “Keyboard and Covert Channels”. What I learned is that a cover channel is almost a mythical channel that, when exploited, special information can be sent through it in order to obtain and decrypt information. This was implemented by attaching a special hardware to a computer, in this case a keyboard, and the device detects whenever any key is not pressed and when this occurs the necessary attachment is sent down the channel. The information is then recovered on a receiver as bits of data.

(Day 07-23-2010)
Today, I came around and there was the Skype meeting. I presented my information that I found. I explained how this was something that I had wanted to work on and model maybe in an experiment. Unfortunately, I was ready for a very typical response, “How are you going to setup and run the experiment”? It has been three weeks and I finally found something that I wanted to study further into and I do not know how something can be achieved. The keyboard “jitterbug”, the device used to exploit the covert channel, was a hardware piece attached to sender computer as the sender sent messages to the initial receiver. The jitterbug branched off to deliver the bits of information of secondary receiver. Meaning to mimic the experiment, I would needed three computers and to attach a special device to the keyboard of one and make a way for the eavesdropper computer to receive the information bits. This would take too long and cost too much to make and implement.

(Day 07-24-2010)
Day Off

(Day 07-25-2010)
Today, I had a meeting with Austin pertaining the REU program. I still had not gained access to DETER, software used for running experiments dealing with security. Austin is an undergraduate that works in the information security laboratory. He told me that I could watch him perform experiments and get a feel of how the DETER program works. He said that his next experiment is taking place tomorrow night 07-26-2010

(Day 07-26-2010)
Today, I watched Austin perform an experiment. The process called for a lot of down time, as the program runs for a certain period of time (i.e. This experiment ran for 11 minutes).

(Day 07-27-2010)
Today, Austin and I reviewed the experiment in greater detail. He mentioned that if that was something that I wanted to do, we would ran an analyze process and read graphs.

(Day 07-28-2010)
During the REU assessment, Dr. Daza had us sign consent forms explaining that we either give or deny others from viewing our results. She explained a survey that all the REU students are required to take so the REU program can evaluate if the program is working. What can be improved?, etc. I filled out the consent forms and went to class.

(Day 07-29-2010)
Today was the REU Research Training and Graduate Studies Workshop. This workshop was extended over a long period of time filled with nothing else except hearing graduate students and professors speak. There were also top representatives of certain student organizations there to speak about their personal experiences. The most interesting part to me was hearing college experiences from Dr. Wright.

(Day 07-30-2010)
I talked with Austin some in regards to the REU. He seemed to be the easiest, most accessible guy to work with. He told me that I could watch some more experiments and that I could also try a little bit myself. This night, I came home to read some more documents.

(Day 07-31-2010)
Day Off

(Day 08-01-2010)
Today, Austin and I met again to setup what I needed to do and how could it be done in such a short time period? After that, Austin gave me a reminder about the experiment being run tomorrow.

(Day 08-02-2010)
I watched Austin run an experiment tonight. The analyze will tell us how the experiment went. Right now the results are in numbers that cannot be interpreted easily or efficiently.

(Day 08-03-2010)
Today, I did the REU survey. When taking the survey given to me by Dr. Daza, I could not help but notice that a lot of the questions where geared toward engineering majors. As I took the survey, I just wondered on how the non-engineering majors that are in this program reacted.

(Day 08-04-2010)
Day Off

(Day 08/05/2010)
Today was the most critical day in my whole research experience. I got to run the analysis programs with Austin. The program took all of the information and packed them into folders. The results were then copied and pasted to a Microsoft Excel document in order to generate a graph and the graphs were to be analyzed. The two graphs needed were eavesdropper cross correlation and eaves dropper selective cross correlation.
(Day 08-06-2010)
Today, I wrote my reflection paper and opened added this document to the blog web page.

(Day 08-07-2010)
Today, I worked towards my powerpoint and poster.

(Day 08-08-2010)
Today, my poster was orientated the wrong way and improvements had to be made.

(Day 08-09-2010)
Today, I meet with Dr. Wright regarding the final presentations tomorrow.

(Day 08-10-2010)
Pending

At the beginning of the REU experience, I sat down and had a talk with Dr. Wright himself. After discussing my goals for a bit and learning about each other, he took me into another room and where I was introduced to all of the graduate students that work in the “iSEC” laboratory. Since that first day, I know the names of only a small few of the many, this being achieved through my interaction with some of the individuals in that group.
NayaTARA, Prateek, and Austin were the main people that I interacted with. About two times a week, we attempted to get together and share what we have been working on. “Tara” was the one Dr. Wright assigned me to work with because of her knowledge in the field that she acquired through the years, pushing her to finish her Ph. D program. Her work has to deal with studying anonymity in high latency networks. Prateek is here from India nearing the end of his undergraduate program at his mother university and his goal while here at the iSec lab is to translate a certain code segment from C to Python. His purpose is to make the code segment able to be distributed to a larger population of people. Austin is an undergraduate that just so happens to be attending my object-oriented programming summer school class, he runs experiments and analyzes multiple sets of results in attempt to find correlations in data.
At our first group meeting, I announced sad that I had no current direction because Dr. Wright instruction told me to find something that I was interested in and I had to read so much that I did not know from what to choose from. At that time I had not read all of the documents that I should have read, but at this point, I have an article on: “RAINBOW: A Robust and Invisible Non-Blind Watermark for Network Flows”, “Evading Stepping Stone Detection Under the Cloak of Streaming Media”, “Keyboards and Covert Channels”, and more. I have finished reading a minimum of five erudite documents, all with pages ranging from about 25-50 pages each. The readings served as a great motivation to want to do research because while reading them one gains the want to be able to discover and write about something of similar importance to stand amongst the few that were published.
The only unfortunate happening is that by the time I gained an interest in what I wanted to do, I had not received access to DETER, a program used to setup experiments. By the time I would have even designed a possible experiment to run, the six weeks would have been over. So instead, I began to run experiments with Austin as a way to gain hands on experience. At first, I watched him run experiments and later, I was able to run them myself. I now have gained a stronger grasp on how packets of information are sent across private networks and how hackers can run tests to see which person is talking to whom. As well as vice versa, a user can run tests to see how secure his/her network is and how anonymous he/she actually is when sending information over an anonymous or undetectable network.
Before, I was skeptical about research. Now, I am more inclined to want to pursue Ph. D to research and add to the knowledge that already exist in the engineering world.
Getting the opportunity to communicate and interact with those who were also interested in research was a great addition as well. There is not much time on a normal college schedule to get to sit down and talk with professors or even other students about why they chose engineering. Things such as attending the REU ethics workshop allowed me to open up more as I shared with others certain personal experiences.