Summer Research 2017: Week 3

This week, I began developing concepts for possible game/simulation ideas regarding DDoS attacks and defense. I began by defining what DDoS is, how its carried out, and how it can be defended against. DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service, is "a type of DOS attack where multiple compromised systems, which are often infected with a Trojan, are used to target a single system causing a Denial of Service (DoS) attack." In a DDoS attack, multiple computers are used to flood the target IP address, for the purpose of overwhelm its network with data. With this in mind, I conceptualized ideas for a game where the player is flooded with information, and they must quickly delete and remove unwanted info from the virtual computer. Also, a simulation type game where the player re-routes internet traffic to avoid being "clogged" by the large amount of data coming in. In future updates, and after speaking with my partner and research advisor, I will further detail how each game would work. The appearance, mechanics, and learning objective will all be examined by us collectively.