Software Development in Cybersecurity, Computer Forensics, and Computer Networking

Knowledge and Understanding:

1. Demonstrate knowledge and critical understanding of the essential facts, concepts,  principles, theories, challenges and techniques for developing software applications in the fields of Cybersecurity, Computer Forensics or Computer Networking.

2. Apply knowledge and understanding of techniques and tools to solve complex computerbased problems. Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:

3. Identify and analyse problems and select and apply effective methods and tools for their solution.

4. Use a range of tools, knowledge and technologies in the development of computing applications.

5. Design, build, test and evaluate a prototype product or service for a specific computing problem domain.

6. Effectively communicate information and analysis, using professional documentation techniques.

Assessment criteria and deliverables required:

• Code Documentation

• Code Functionality and style

Over the course of semester 1 and 2 you have been introduced to the following:

1) C++ programming.

2) Code Organisation across files.

3) Code style and a style guide for this module.

4) A systematic methodology for designing functions.

5) Tools for debugging code.

6) The memory structure of a running program.

7) Buffer overflows.

8) Memory allocation on the stack and the heap.

9) Object oriented programming.

During the lab sessions you have had significant exposure to the tools and techniques that you will need to fulfil the requirements of this assignment. You are to use this knowledge to design a piece of software that is professionally documented and tested, and will run without modification on a lab PC with the Ubuntu operating system installed.

Your programs should run from the command line and should use command line arguments for the encrypted and decrypted file names. During the analysis phase of your programs running cycle, you should print out the character counts for each character in the alphabet, to the terminal. You should also provide prompts to the user as to the status of the analysis, as well as the resulting key value that will be used to decrypt the file. It is your responsibility to make your program as user friendly as possible.

The executable program should run from the command line without modification using 2 command line arguments: an encrypted filename and a filename to write thedecrypted text to. It should suggest a key to use from analysis of the text and allow the user to enter or select a key. On selection of the key a sample of decrypted text should be provided allowing the user to decide whether to continue with the decryption process or choose another key. The program should end after writing the decrypted text to a file.