Ahh The Easter Break...My Work Overview

After completing all the exciting work before Easter, because, well, it was more exciting that the standard essays. I am now left with completing pure essays and not much hands on Hacking/Forensics!

Currently left to hand in i have:

• Essay on "The effects of Encryption on IT Systems and Digital Investigations"
• Essay on "Biometric Spoofing Techniques"
• A Penetration Testing Methodology
• A Penetration Testing Report
• Writing up notes from a Digital Investigation on a suspects USB stick and network traces.

The essay on encryption is pretty much done. I just need to finish the conclusion. I actually enjoyed writing this essay as strange as it sounds, as encryption is a very broad topic and the topic of the essay helped me to focus on specific elements of the subject and actually learn new things rather than being daunted by trying to learn "encryption" as a whole from the beginning. It was also extremely useful discovering the changes in procedures when doing an investigation. I will post up my brief notes in another post (so no-one can plagiarise before submission)

The essay on Biometric Spoofing has been quite tedious in all honesty. Although i like the concept of Biometrics and think its a great idea, i really dont have too much interest in it as a whole so got a bit bored writing it to the level expected. However, i persevered over the past couple of months and have got it to a level where i am very happy with it. 

I must admit that I have learned something new with it so it cant be all that bad!

The various different ways that a biometric security system can be spoofed has been an eye opener and from the research i have done, it seems that alot more research needs to be done on stopping spoofing. 

The methodology has been less interesting than i thought it would be. This, i think, is down to the fact we did something extremely similar last semester, so i was trying to not repeat myself. I know the importance of a methodology and appreciate it, but there is only so many times you can list the steps you want to take before it seems like you are writing instructions on how to make the perfect cup of tea!

The testing report in my defence i can only half write at the moment as we havent actually conducted our penetration test. So i have just got every thing layed out so far. 

The notes from the Digital Investigation has nearly been done. Just need to make sure ive got everything in there and havent missed out something stupidly obvious!!