I have managed to get two major research projects underway,
one of them has even developed into a senior year elective
course and a book written by my two professors.
And in the spirit of open source, my work is available on-line so
you can enjoy (???) it yourself.
The Hack Project
Or formerly known as "The I Computer" (because of some
fixation with the J from Java), was one of the most interesting
projects I have worked on. Initially we have developed a platform
that is essentially a computer simulator, where everything is
open (think of those car show half transparent vehicles where you
see the engine and underlying mechanics, only here we are talking
bits and bytes). Then everything that goes on top of a computer -
machine language, high level language, compiler, interpreter,
operating system and a couple of demo applications.
This has evolved into something more rigorous, as I was
fortunate enough to have a small team of developers do the coding
for the second round (once you get it working, scrape it and do
it again - a privilege you have only in the academy), to lead
into the development of version 2 of the project. The final
product is being used now in a mandatory
course taught at the IDC (and an elective at MIT.
(Links are changing every academic year but a quick search at
the university website should get you there).
The paper is available
here.
DDOS Analysis
In this paper we have analyzed the mechanics of Distributed Denial of Service (or more commonly knows as DDOS), and have came up with the basis for a theoretical solution to handling such attacks. This project, although smaller in scale and social implications (I did not want any more students chasing after me asking questions about the course from the previous projects), had some more real-life implications, as the paper was used by a small startup company whom the professor I was working with was involved in.The research paper is available here.