Assignment: Virtual Private Networks

Purposes

The purpose of this assignment is to review existing literatures on important VPN technologies and issues and write a report. The report must be specific to the given topics, use appropriate examples and detail of the topic given to develop a review paper. In preparing the assignment, students should acquire not only the knowledge of current technical aspects of VPN but also research, data collection, analysis and writing skills. Students should be able to demonstrate their achievements in the following unit learning outcomes:

a. Explain the significance of VPN for contemporary organisations
b. Discuss the role of VPN to support the security of businesses and corporations.

Assignment Description

Your tasks are to analyse and to write a report about the processes and the security technologies being used when you access your bank account online via a web browser. It is a well-known fact that the Internet is a public network and every single message you exchange with the server can potentially be intercepted by attackers. You need to analyse in detail what technologies and techniques are used to prevent attackers from modifying the financial transaction requests you initiate on the server and what keeps your passwords and credit card details safe on the wire between your browser and the online banking server.

You are required to address the following topics and task in details in your report:

1. The authentication process between the server and the browser.

1.1 Analytical Tasks

a) Analyse and write a report on how the browser ensures that it is communicating to the right server?
b) Describe the role of the digital signatures in this process.
c) Analyse and write a report on how the server ensures that it is communicating to the account owner?
d) Briefly describe at least three other additional techniques that can be used to achieve authentication of the clients by servers.

1.2 Practical Tasks: Open your browser, visit your online banking website and verify:

a) Which certificate authority your bank has acquired the SSL certificate from?
b) What information is embedded inside the SSL certificate presented by the server?
c) The certificates issued by which companies are installed as the trusted root certificates on your computer? Describe the purpose of the trusted root certificates.

2. The confidentiality and the integrity services used for to secure the communication between the
server and the browser.

2.1 Analytical Tasks

a) Analyse and write a report on how the server and the browser agree on which cipher suit to use?

b) Analyse and write a report on how they agree on the symmetrical secret key for the encryption and hashing algorithms?

2.2 Practical Tasks: Open your browser, visit your online banking website and verify:

d) Which version of the SSL/TLS protocol is being used?

e) What encryption algorithm is being used for confidentiality?

f) What hashing algorithm is being used for integrity?

3. The anti-replay service between the server and the browser.

3.1 Analytical Task

a) Analyse and write a report on how the protection against replay attacks are achieved between the server and the browser.

Instructions:

1. To enhance your understanding of the technology in this report you are required to describe how the technology works theoretically, as well as you need to perform some small practical activities and include the screenshots and the descriptions of them. The questions are organized in the logical order, however to make them easy to distinguish, the analytical questions are presented in blue and the
practical questions are presented in green.

2. Include cover page with the subject name, the assignment name, the student name and ID, submission date.

3. Include table of contents.

4. Include table of figures.

5. Ensure that all the figures are numbered and names. You have to refer to the figures you add in the
contexts.

6. Strictly follow the IEEE reference format for in-body citations and the references section.

7. You can use trustable online resources and documentations from well-known technology companies
such as Microsoft, Cisco, Juniper and etc.

8. No plagiarism is allowed.

9. There are no limitations to the minimum and maximum word counts included in this assignments.

However, it is expected that the report is correct, it is written to the point and using the right technical terminologies.