first security app

Hi,

i'm in college and pretty soon i'll have to come up with a project proposal for a 2nd semester project (but i only have 6 weeks to do the project).

I've a good grasp of C/C++ and Java, does anyone have any ideas on what i could my project on security wise, with a leaning towards NETWORK security?

thanks

6 weeks is not much time for creating something big, and you probably have to write a paper also... How about just creating a web-service or something, where you use secure transmission of some sort.

Here's an interesting thing: In Microsofts .Net, all communcation between applications is based on XML. How about you make a server application that performs some kind of service for a client application. That could be almost anything; storage of data, how about an online address-book? You base the communication between the client and the server on the .Net framework, and you make the transmission secure. Then you'll learn somehing that is going to be HUGE in the business, eg. .Net.

thanks for the idea, is XML or .NET hard to get your head around? i'll go check it them asap. But first i must eat! :)

thanks again

Shouldn't be too hard... You don't need to learn the ins and outs of XML for such a project. And Microsoft got easy to use high level APIs for the most common tasks, such as communication between applications. But you will need Microsoft Visual Studio .Net. If you look around on the net you could probably find a tutorial that you could just modify for your purposes. http://msdn.microsoft.com is as good place to start.

If you don't have access to Visual Studio .NET you might want to look into SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) which is an XML based protocol for communication. If you Google around a bit, you'll find source code for both a client and a server. Microsoft got an API called 'SOAP toolkit' which I think is very easy. It can be used in both Visual Basic and Visual C++.

Here's a couple of links to get you started. Good luck with your project!

XML tutorial:
http://www.xmlfiles.com/xml/default.asp

.NET Web Services
http://www.w3schools.com/ngws/ngws_webservices.asp