Thesis Proposals
This page outlines the rules that MUST be followed to successfully complete your thesis with us. Failure to comply may jeopardize your thesis progress.
Thesis Request
The only official way to request a thesis is by sending an email to the research group mailing list: netsecresearch [at] live.unibo.it. Requests made in person or sent to individual group members will NOT be considered.
You may only request a thesis if you are up to date with your exams or have no more than two remaining.
Your thesis request email must include the following information:
- Whether it is a Bachelor’s or Master’s thesis;
- The number of CFUs. Note: 3 CFU theses are strongly recommended as compilative theses;
- The number of remaining exams;
- Your expected graduation date;
- The desired topic (e.g., P4).
Once your request is accepted, you will be assigned a repository on our Git forge containing a template. You are required to complete it according to the instructions provided in the README.
Rules for Thesis Work
Biweekly Progress Updates
All thesis students are required to provide updates every two weeks on their progress by sending an email to the research group mailing list (netsecresearch [at] live.unibo.it). These updates are essential to keep the entire team informed of your current status and ongoing work.
Your email should include any developments related to your thesis or, if applicable, a brief explanation of your current academic activities (e.g., exam preparation).
Important: If you fail to submit three consecutive biweekly updates (i.e., over a six-week period), your thesis title will be considered abandoned and may be reassigned to another student.
Deadlines
It is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to keep track of all deadlines, including title submission, thesis upload, and others.
Thesis Writing Guidelines
To ensure consistency and quality, you should follow our official Thesis Writing Guidelines.
Note on Compilative Theses
Compilative theses are intended to require minimal effort from both the student and the supervisor. You are expected to take full responsibility for developing your thesis independently. We will only review and provide feedback on the final draft. However, all MANDATORY RULES still apply, including sending regular biweekly updates.
The maximum recommended length is approximately 10,000 words, excluding the title page, abstract, table of contents, and bibliography.
For UniBo students: if you choose a compilative thesis, you should expect to receive (0 + rounding) additional points.
Note on Theses with Internship
Please read carefully the instructions provided on the course page. To complete the self-application procedure, you will need the following information (in Italian):
- Tutor: Prof. Marco Prandini
- Indirizzo sede di svolgimento tirocinio: Viale del Risorgimento 2, Bologna (BO), Italia.
- Laboratorio/Ufficio: Ulisse Lab
- Data inizio/fine tirocinio: You are free to decide but the internship end date should be at least two weeks prior to the internship final assessment/exam.
- Orario: 8:00 - 18:00.
- Oggetto dell’offerta: Title of the internship project.
- Obiettivi in termini di capacità e conoscenze da acquisire durante il tirocinio ed attività previste per raggiungerli: Simple abstract of the internship project.
- Attività previste: List all the activities you foresee carrying out.
You MUST register (verbalizzare) the internship before the graduation requirements deadline.
Available Theses
P4
| Type | Description | References |
|---|---|---|
| Research | Trying out new emulation P4 targets. This thesis wants to analyse virtualised tools to containerize the P4 control and data plane by trying out P4Runtime in a state-of-the-art networking production product: stratum. The thesis aims on installing the solution in a real-world networking device that supports stratum. | Stratum github |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "Cerberus: Enabling Efficient and Effective In-Network Monitoring on Programmable Switches", analysis of the code in the repository, and execution of some simple tests. | Cerberus Paper, Github Repo |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "SABRE: Protecting Bitcoin against Routing Attacks". If feasible, re-implement part of the work in a simple P4 PoC. | SABRE Paper page |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "A Robust Counting Sketch for Data Plane Intrusion Detection". If feasible, re-implement part of the work in a simple P4 PoC. | NDSS Paper page |
INDUSTRIAL SECURITY
| Type | Description | References |
|---|---|---|
| Compilative | Study of Virtualization Technologies for Industrial Device/Components, e.g. PLC. | Github Example |
| Compilative | Analysis and description of the New Machinery Regulation (“Nuovo Regolamento Macchine”), Italian legislation relating to safety in an industrial environment. | Regulation |
| Compilative | Translation and adaptation of the IEC/ISA 62443 3.3 Industrial Security Standard into the OSCAL Framework for automated assessments and Compliance as A Code. | OSCAL, ISA/IEC-62443 |
| Research | Analysis and test of the Open Source Cyber Range KYPO. | KYPO |
| Research | Cybersecurity Cyber Range: Development in React of software components within a Cyber Range aimed at the virtualization of industrial systems and the simulation of cyber attacks on these systems. | CRI4.0 |
| Research | Study and simulation of the main types of attacks on the ModBus industrial protocol. | ModBusSploit |
| Research | Study of the security of industrial protocol XXX and execution of attacks or security tests. | List Of Industrial Protocols |
| Research | Advanced Lab of Intrusion Detection System Rules for XXX, with Suricata. | Suricata Official Doc. Page |
| Research | Implementation of a virtualized RTU unit simulator in our Kathara Cyber Range, plus implementation of the necessary GUI components for adding it in a network scenario. The implementation is described in the linked Github repository. | Github |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "A Tale of Two Industroyers: It was the Season of Darkness" and testing of the proposed sandbox. | Article, Github repo |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "EmuFlex: A Flexible OT Testbed for Security Experiments with OPC UA" and porting of the OT security testbed to the Kathara framework. | Article, Github repo |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "From Standard to Practice: Towards ISA/IEC 62443-Conform Public Key Infrastructures" and implementation of the proposed guidelines in OPC UA. | Article |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "Covert Timing Channel Attack on OPC UA-based Industrial Control Systems" and porting of the proposed javascript implementation to python asyncua or to the OPC UA OT testbed. | Article, Github repo |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "Information Hiding in Industrial Control Systems: An OPC UA based Supply Chain Attack and its Detection" and implementation of the attack in an OT testbed based on OpenPLC. | Article, OT Testbed |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "ICS-Sniper: A Targeted Blackhole Attack on Encrypted ICS Traffic", re-implementation of the virtualized testbed described in the paper, and execution of some simple tests. | ICS-Sniper paper |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "By the Numbers: Towards Standard Evaluation Metrics for Programmable Logic Controllers’ Defenses" and implementation of the proposed security metrics in OpenPLC. | Paper |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "Gadgets of Gadgets in Industrial Control Systems: Return Oriented Programming Attacks on PLCs". Then try to implement the ROP attacks in binaries compiled by Matiec and Rusty, the two most employed PLC control logic compilers. | Paper |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "Towards PLC-Specific Binary Analysis Tools: An Investigation of Codesys-Compiled PLC Software Applications". Based on what it is described on the paper, then try to reverse engineer some binaries using the ICSREF tool. | Paper, ICSREF github |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "ICSPatch: Automated Vulnerability Localization and Non-Intrusive Hotpatching in Industrial Control Systems using Data Dependence Graphs", analysis of the code in the repository, and execution of some simple tests. | ICSPatch Paper, Github repo |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "Control Logic Attack Detection and Forensics Through Reverse-Engineering and Verifying PLC Control Applications" and execution of some simple tests based on what is written on the paper. | Paper |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "From Control Application to Control Logic: PLC Decompile Framework for Industrial Control System" and execution of some simple tests based on what is written on the paper. | Paper |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "Compromising Industrial Processes using Web-Based Programmable Logic Controller Malware". Based on what it is described on the paper, then try to implement an attack PoC based on OpenPLC. | Paper |
| Compilative/Research | LLMs for PLCs control logic. Analysis of the paper "LLM4PLC: Harnessing Large Language Models for Verifiable Programming of PLCs in Industrial Control Systems", analysis of the code in the repository, and execution of some simple tests. | Paper, Github Repo |
| Compilative/Research | LLMs for PLCs control logic. Analysis of the paper "LLM-based and Retrieval-Augmented Control Code Generation", analysis of the code in the repository, and execution of some simple tests. | Paper, Github Repo |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "ICSML: Industrial Control Systems ML Framework for native inference using IEC 61131-3 code", analysis of the code in the repository, and execution of some simple tests. | Paper, Github Repo |
| Research | Integration of the Modelica OPC UA Tool developed by Wolfram with an OPC UA testbed for Industrial Control Simulation and Hardware in the loop. | Tool, Testbed |
| Research | Experiments with the Industrial Control Systems Modelica Library for ICS real-time simulation. | Library |
MISC
| Type | Description | References |
|---|---|---|
| Compilative | Analysis of major cybersecurity breach events and correlation with their financial consequences, including stock market impact. The study aims to identify patterns and quantify the economic implications of security incidents on affected organizations. | Report, Article 1, Article 2 |
| Compilative | Machine Learning for Binary Similarity. This thesis aims to analyze different machine learning methods for binary similarity. Binary similarity techniques are crucial for malware analysis, reverse engineering, and vulnerability research. The study will evaluate existing approaches, compare their effectiveness, and discuss their practical applications without proposing novel methods. | List |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "VulHawk: Cross-architecture Vulnerability Detection with Entropy-based Binary Code Search" analysis of the code in the repository, and execution of some simple tests. | Paper, Github Repo |
| Compilative/Research | Analysis of the paper "Code is not Natural Language: Unlock the Power of Semantics-Oriented Graph Representation for Binary Code Similarity Detection", analysis of the code in the repository, and execution of some simple tests. | Paper, Github Repo |
SECURITY OF UNMANNED UNDERWATER AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES
| Type | Description | References |
|---|---|---|
| Research | Instantiate an UNMANNED UNDERWATER AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES simulator that it is able to perform easy task. In the literature there are several open source projects, the most promising one is DAVE Project Link. Goal of this thesis is to deploy a version of a simulator. | Other reference |