PHP final year project ideas for Forensic Computing BSc

[daza166]

Hi,
I am really struggling to get some ideas for a project to do for my final year in Forensic Computing course. Unlike other computer courses it has to be something to do with computer forensics area I have been told.

I am medium programmer in C but very confident in using PHP. Have created many different websites in PHP so could easily create a website similar to wikipedia, facebook, social networking type etc. However although that may be fine for computer science courses I dont think a website is enough for a forensic computing course project.

So trying to think of interesting project using PHP. Few ideas I have thought of:

• PHP to do browser forensics ie get evidence from a browser and export it to a file
• PHP to create some sort of forensic web tool ie pen testing (is it possible)

Need some possible ideas around this area if possible, would really appreciate it guys/girls.

[chrishea]

I, for one, have never taken a forensic computing course / degree so without knowing what the course covered, it's hard to make any suggestions. I suspect others may be in the same situation. I imagine that there is some distinction but also some overlap between computer security and forensic computing but I'm not sure where that dividing line would be. Despite your comfort with PHP, I'm not sure that it would be the best language to do anything forensic. If you want to do something that is mainly desktop oriented (including the browsers), then a web-based language like PHP doesn't have the detailed access you would probably need. Even in terms of the network, PHP has limited access to information. I am guessing that C or some other language that has access to operating system routines (e.g. DLLs) would be a lot more useful. Since this your final year project, I assume that it needs to be something substantial.

If you deserve to pass this course, then you must have some ideas as to what forensic computing is and what the key problems are that forensic accounting must deal with. The same as if you were an entrepreneur trying to create something, you need to identify a need and try to solve it. If you want help from this forum, then I think that you need to give us a quick tutorial on forensic computing and identify some needs that you could possibly address in your project.