Although my group chose not to go with it, I think the Malware Analysis project would have been an interesting and fun choice. Not only is it a relevant and very newsworthy topic, but it’s also something that a lot of employers are interested in in terms of hiring.
One reason – even before all the recent attacks – that I am so interested in the subject is because over the past year I have been in somewhat of an all things hacker related literary hole. I have read everything from to Kevin Mitnick’s Ghost In The Wires to Cult of the Dead Cow, The Cuckoo’s Egg, Sandworm, and Countdown To Zero Day to name just a few. I started playing around on OverTheWire and was excited when we had a project based around encryption/decryption in CS 344: Operating Systems. I also had a lot of fun messing around with Wireshark in CS 372: Intro To Networks while also using it alongside NetworkChuck‘s videos in my free time. To me, the subject is extremely interesting and I try to read every article that I come across online and follow all the different relevant twitter accounts (Malwaretech – the guy who solved the WannaCry ransomware bug – is a great follow).
That said, I am no where near effective or efficient in any of the above topics so that’s why it would have been fun to dig a little deeper with a capstone Malware project. It looks like I might just have to take that up in my free time which if you can tell, I don’t really have a problem doing!
