CS297 Proposal

Incorporating Privacy and Security Features in an Open Source Search Engine

Akash(akash3664@yahoo.com)

Advisor: Dr. Chris Pollett

Most modern search engines record user IP address, the time of visit and user tracking cookies to keep track of search terms in order to improve efficiency of the search result and show user specific advertisement. This information can be used to reveal personal information and so many people object to its collection.

Yioop is a GPLv3, open source, PHP search engine developed by Dr. Pollett. Since Yioop is an open source it is easy to understand what information it uses from a user request.

For this project we plan to implement following features to Yioop to enhance the privacy one has when using this search engine. Proxy feature in Yioop, Perfect forward secrecy for Yioop and modify Yioop to crawl Tor networks.

Schedule:

Week 1: (Aug/26-Sep/1)	Deliverable #1:Project Proposal
Week 2: (Sep/2-Sep/8)	Understanding of Yioop
Week 3: (Sep/9-Sep/15)	Deliverable #2:PPT on Perfect forward secrecy
Week 4,5,6: (Sep/16-Oct/6)	Deliverable #3:Implement Perfect forward secrecy feature in Yioop
Week 7,8: (Oct/7-Oct/20)	Understand Tor networks
Week 9,10: (Oct/21-Nov/4)	Deliverable #4:Write a code to crawl Tor networks
Week 11,12: (Nov/5-Nov/17)	Deliverable #5:Read and implement proxy feature
Week 13 (Nov/18-Nov/24)	Work on Proxy feature
Week 14-15: (Nov/25-Dec/8)	Deliverable #6: CS297 Report

Deliverables:

The full project will be done when CS298 is completed. The following will be done by the end of CS297:

1. Project proposal

2. Research document (PPT)on Perfect forward secrecy

3. PHP script to verify Perfect forward secrecy

4. Code to crawl Tor network

5. Implementation Code of Proxy feature

5. CS297 proposal

References:

1. Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_forward_secrecy

2. Mark Stamp(2005)Information Security Principles and practice,A John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Publication