Alone or with a partner or two.
Nearly every day, my news feed delivers to me news of some previously unknown computer security problem. Sometimes the technical content of the problem is not very interesting. For example, most successful phishing involves using human foibles (e.g. inattention, ignorance, susceptibility to flattery, blind obedience, etc.) to get people to just give their passwords away.
On the other hand, there have been many security breaches over the year whose technical content is very interesting. Stuxnet, shellshock, and the Target credit card thefts, for example, all require effort and knowledge to understand in detail, and they all reveal interesting aspects of the wide scope of security vulnerabilities.
For this project, you will select a technically interesting security incident from computer history, and tell explain both its history (what happened and what were the results?) and its technical structure (how did the offending software work?).
You will tell your story in web page/site form, for an audience of CS-savvy people (e.g. other CS majors at Carleton). We will set aside a class day for sharing the projects in a digital poster session. See this page for help.
Think about ways to teach your audience the technical details of your subject better more effectively than what you find in your research. Can you make a picture or diagram that puts it all together? Can you illustrate the problem via a sample program? etc.
Don't scrimp on the details. Ideally, you will produce the sites to which I would gladly point future students who want to really understand how breach X or Y was achieved.
Include a references section to cite your sources.
Hand in your project by emailing me its URL.
Have fun!