Fall Research 2017: Week 2

This week I read two more articles regarding DDoS attack and defense, as well as participated in administering a focus group test of our current game on phishing. One of the articles i read was "Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: Four Best Practices for Prevention and Response" by Rachel Kartch. Essentially, this article was about the disruptiveness of DDoS attacks and the current rise of sophisticated DDoS attacks. Within the article, Kartch gives an explanation as to why these sophisticated attacks have become more prevalent, using the attack on Dyn in 2016 as an example. "Attacking a DNS or a content delivery provider such as Dyn or Akamai in this manner gives hackers the ability to interrupt many more companies than they could by directly attacking corporate servers, because several companies shared Dyn's network." Kartch also breaks down three forms of DDoS attacks: Volumetric attacks, Protocol attacks, and Applications attacks. I found this to be useful information because it gives three specified areas for us to focus on as we progress in our development. I believe beginning with volumetric attacks would be best because, according to this article, they comprise more than 50 percent of attacks launched.

I also helped administer a first round test of our game on the mobile platform. We installed our game Bird's Life onto about 20 Samsung tablets to allow a class, mostly comprised of Freshmen and Sophomores, to test its entertainment, educational, and functionality factors. From this first test I discovered that simplistic and more direct instructions are a desired addition for players. Also, better controlled main gameplay when facing 3 obstacles onscreen was another issue that some players had. We also ran into some people having an issue regarding the transition to the after-game survey. This means we will go through our code again to ensure the link works consistently. Overall, this first test was very successful with a lot of positive feedback about our choice of game type, inclusion of useful tips, and difficulty level. We can now go back and analyze all of the information we have collected, both verbal and in the game's data files, to create a better playing and learning experience.