Cyber Operations Case Study

1. Introduction to Candidates
This assignment is the formal assessment for COCS71153 CO module and is, therefore, compulsory.
The Case Study is weighted at 100% of the module grade. You will be required to work individually,
so time management is very important. When reading this assignment please read all elements
carefully and understand what is being asked of you, DO NOT rely on your friend to explain what is
expected, if you have any issues, please ask me directly. The aim is to give you the opportunity to
investigate, conduct research, and analyse a cutting-edge research challenge within the realm of
Cyber Operations. You will score 0% mark for a topic not listed below.

For this research paper, you are to submit a word-processed document. You are required to
investigate research challenge given below as a professional researcher. This should include
researching the latest technologies, solutions, and standards related to the research challenge;
critical evaluation of the state-of-the-art solutions & beyond them; simulation results for proof-of-
concept (optional); reflections/recommendations & conclusions from findings.

Be careful to use the IEEE template exactly & you are only allowed a maximum of 4 sides of A4! No
specific word count is given but the research paper must be within this limit (you can’t change the
font size from standard). The ability to summarise the most important points for each sub-topic, in a
specified word/page limit is a skill that is very important in academia. Therefore, up to 100% marks
will be deducted for exceeding the limit. Your paper must be written in your own words “entirely”
and must include a reference section indicating all your resources of information you have gone
through. References are excluded from word count. Remember your sources of information must be
authoritative & academic (so NO online websites are allowed). This research assignment must rely
on an abundance number of: IEEE and/or ACM and/or Springers and/or Elsevier
journals/conferences and books published recently. Using at least 20 references from IEEE with such
quality is a must. You should also consider the use of your own (drawn or re-drawn) illustrations (i.e.
your own tables/graphics – no COPY/PASTE materials allowed) to exemplify/summarise your
discussion. You need to be very careful not to plagiarise material in academia. Plagiarism can result
in a mark of 0% for the assignment, and/or even failure of the entire course.

Your final research paper should be submitted by the deadline announced previously. You need to
submit your research paper before this deadline. Your paper must be submitted in electronic format
to the Turnitin plagiarism checking service via the link on the university VLE, Blackboard. This will be
set up near to the deadline to allow you to submit your work. Please only submit .DOC (X) version of
the research paper otherwise it might NOT be recognised by the Turnitin.

Now: you must watch the video we have provided on “How To Write An IEEE Paper” where we tell
you step by step our research expectations and marking criteria for your IEEE based research from
here. Then: find & read the relevant literature, which is extensive, in this area. You need to take
notes of the most essential parts of your research findings & summarise them at the end into 4-
pages according to this video. It is important that you start your research early. Proofread your work
before hand-in date & check for any grammatical or spelling errors in your report as the last step. If
you have any questions or need further clarification on this assignment, please use forum & email
me ([email protected]).

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2. Requirements
a) You are required to produce a research paper according to IEEE publication standard,
templates can be found at:
http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html . Be
careful to only use IEEE template for conference papers including font size/style and keep
within the maximum number of sides allowed. Exceeding this limit or not abiding by IEEE
template will be strictly penalised (i.e. 0%). The IEEE template dictates a very strict policy on
font type, font size/style & layout. To get your points across, diagrams are always necessary
(your own drawn diagrams, NOT COPY/PASTE). Example: use diagrams instead of describing
a process. Or a table representation when you are comparing various solutions for the same
research challenge against each other. This can well summarise your arguments &
prove/provide critical analysis.
b) IEEE referencing system MUST be used (= NO HARVARD REFERENCING). When it comes to
marking, the first thing we always check for each and individual assignment students submit,
no matter which module it is for, is the list of references researchers have gone through.
This well informs us about the research journey they have undertaken. Remember, each
academic assignment on its own is a research task! Now the question is: how solid your
research skills are. As you will see, IEEE referencing uses numbers within square brackets.
Note that different types of resources are cited differently according to IEEE referencing.
Example: if you must mention a website then you need to provide the date it was accessed
as well, or specific information for conference papers is shown in italic style as part of
referencing rules, etc. Remember IEEE/ACM journal papers you read online are not cited as
WWW resources with links & dates as they are not freely/publicly accessible. Also note that
later versions of MS Word may have IEEE referencing built-in support which you can use.
However, always double check before submission as they may produce errors too.
c) In the abstract, you start off with a brief description of what the research topic is about just
to set out the scene, then one or two sentences about the main research challenges &
findings. This simply means that you leave writing the abstract to the very end and after you
have completed the actual research. Index terms are the keywords related to your research
aim & its context. Introduction provides the background of this study to the reader (ex.
taxonomy, anatomy, etc. but not history or politics!). The final paragraph of the introduction
section should introduce briefly the forthcoming sections one by one in a few words.
o The abstract is the last item that you write, but the first thing people read when they
want to have a quick overview of the whole paper. We suggest you leave writing the
abstract to the end, because you will have a clearer picture of all your findings. How
do I write an abstract? First re-read your completed research paper for an overview.
Then read each section and shrink the information in each down to 1-2 sentences;
next read these sentences again to ensure that they cover the major points in your
paper; ensure you have written something for each of the key points outlined above
for either the descriptive or informative abstract; check the word length and further
reduce your words if necessary by cutting out unnecessary words or rewriting some
of the sentences into a single, more succinct sentence; and edit for coherence.
d) You should see the marking criteria detailed below before starting the writeup of research.
Remember that you don’t need to provide confidentiality statement at this stage in the
paper. Effectiveness of the writing is a criterion and means that it gets the point across easily
(in academic writing, simple and short sentences are needed). You don’t need to include the
list of tables/figures. Under introduction, you need to set the context well and ensure that
your research objectives are clearly stated in advance. The most important part of the main

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 body is the research problem formulation, critical analysis of current remedies & literature
review, as well as the added thinking by you after stepping beyond the state-of-the-art.
Consequently, note that the more research you put into this section the higher mark you
should expect.
e) You need to make sure that the quality of your research is technical/challenging enough for
this level of your academic degree. To meet this requirement, you need to watch the video
provided and email me in case of any ambiguities. Topic of research is: “Malware Analysis:
Stuxnet”. Relying mainly on an abundance number of academic journals published recently,
we would like you to:
o Mathematically formulate/model the research issues/solutions for this topic
(optional);
o Clearly explain the latest research proposals for the above challenges found in
publications you have gone through & the ideas behind them;
o Compare the solutions against each other, weigh up pros/cons &
similarities/differences, in a summary table with your comparison metrics acquired
in the course of your literature review;
o Optionally propose a novel solution for the research challenge;
o Optionally simulate & evaluate some attacks/remedies;
o And discuss how future direction of this research looks like with regards to
unanswered questions.
f) The main resource to be used for this assignment is IEEE Xplore Digital Library (as Staffs
student, you will have an account with this for free). When searching for a specific topic
within Xplore, remember to narrow than your search results to ONLY include recent Journal
papers from the left panel. This is because these types of publication are considered as the
most reliable academic resources to use. The second important resource is ACM Digital
Library (you have subscription to that too). For best practice: first check the abstract of a
given paper you have found and see how it is relevant to your research question before
going through its details. You do NOT need to fully understand a paper, just those bits that
are directly related to your research question need to be digested. The more references you
use, the better/enricher your research is.
o Quality of References: try to use academic journal papers only. Staffordshire
University has subscriptions to many online journals, especially use:
 ACM Digital Library (https://dl-acm-org.ezproxy.staffs.ac.uk/dl.cfm)
 IEEE/IET Electronic Library (IEL) (https://ieeexplore-ieee-
org.ezproxy.staffs.ac.uk/Xplore/home.jsp)
g) All submitted assignments are processed by Turnitin plagiarism check software, this will
identify any passages of text which are copied from books, WWW, papers and other
documents. If there are any paragraphs which are copied in this way - even if placed
between “double-quotations” and then referenced – this will be penalised. If the submitted
work exceeds 15% similarity excluding references, then it will be considered for academic
misconduct (which is a serious crime in academia!). Any information provided in an
assignment which is taken from other sources needs to be rephrased by you and then cited
using IEEE referencing method.
o Please note that providing a reference for a copied passage is unacceptable (even if
it is placed within “double-quotations” and then provided with citation), This is still
considered as plagiarism (i.e. everything must be in your own words & from the
third person language). Therefore, try to avoid the use of quotes. Please refer to the

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 university academic regulations at this link for more information:
http://libguides.staffs.ac.uk/refzone/plagiarism/

3. Marking Criteria
WARNING – Please check that your paper is entirely written by yourself and without any quoted
sections, every technical statement you make must be in your own wording & properly referenced.
Failure to do so will break the university regulations related to academic dishonesty.

Criteria Maximum Mark Allocation

Paper Title – should contain: Title, your name, email
Max 5
address, award title, date
Abstract – Effectiveness of abstract, clearness of
Max 5
content structure
Introduction – relevance of introduction, setting the
context, purpose & background, terminologies,
Max 10
research challenges, clear research aims and
objectives, profiles of forthcoming sections
Main body –
1. Thorough Literature Review & Research
Problem Formulation – high quality examination of
existing works, clear setting of context, discussion of
related journals & quality of up-to-date referencing,
proposing new classification/categorisation for the
state-of-the-art research solutions/challenges,
display of critical understanding
Min 55 – Max 100
2. Research / Investigation (heart of this
assignment!) – level of personal research
undertaken, and critical thinking added to the
existing works, mathematical analysis undertaken,
simulation/emulation experiments (with primary
results for validation), proof-of-concept, clearness of
presentation with the aid of illustrations
(tables/graphs/figures)
Conclusions section – summary of research findings,
quality of critical thought and reflection, indication
Max 10
of future avenue for more research based on
findings of the current research paper
References section – Correct show of IEEE standard
Max 10
of referencing within the paper and at the end of it
IEEE Requirements Min 5 – Max 100

• Always check Blackboard/Teams announcements & discussion forum for more updates on
the assignments. Make sure you submit your research paper under the right place on VLE,
Blackboard.

Good Luck,

Dr Vahid Heydari Fami Tafreshi

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