STEM Program

Cybersecurity: Fake News, Cryptocurrency, Policies and Beyond

Faculty Advisor: Research Scientist, Georgia Institute of Technology

Research Program Introduction

On July 2, 2021, a US-based vendor (Kaseya) that provides software solutions in 10 countries was attacked by Ransomware. As a result, 800 supermarket chain stores in Sweden had to temporarily close because their cash registers could not be opened.

Internet attacks are increasingly sophisticated and complex. As we see on the news, Internet attacks can have huge impacts on our everyday lives, such as disconnecting entire countries and critical infrastructure (e.g., food and gas supply chains) and leaking sensitive financial and personal information (e.g., credit card and social security numbers). As a result, there is an increasing need for experts in all aspects of cybersecurity. 

In this program, we will first build our background on computer networking and why the Internet is vulnerable. Then, we will explore popular research topics using hands-on techniques and datasets. Optionally, we will leverage data science techniques to tackle a problem. 

Students will also learn general and subject-specific research and academic writing methods used in universities and scholarly publications. Students will focus on individual topics and generate their own work products upon program completion.

Possible Topics For Final Project:

  • Identifying fake news: using natural language processing techniques and real social media datasets

  • Cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency attacks: how can we defend against them? How can we detect unauthorized mining activities?

  • Physical disasters causing internet disruptions

  • Denial of service attacks and hijacking

  • Detection of compromised devices

  • Distribution of malicious libraries in Python

  • Cybersecurity and machine learning

  • Internet policy and social media

  • Other professor-approved topics in this subject area that you are interested in

Program Details

  • Cohort size: 3 to 5 students

  • Workload: Around 4 to 5 hours per week (including class and homework time)

  • Target students: 9 to 12th graders interested in computer science or engineering, internet security, data science, machine learning, policy, and other computer/security-related fields. Knowledge of coding is a plus but not required.

  • Schedule: TBD. Meetings will take place for around one hour per week, with a weekly meeting day and time to be determined a few weeks before the class start date.