Requirements for Building a Secure System for Online Performance Evaluations Dan Rubin, James Tsai, James Watson and Philip Varner December 4, 2000 David Evans, CS 551

Meet Johnny Q. Survey It’s time to fill out those surveys What does Johnny want? –Anonymity –Relatively simple, quick method to fill them out

Meet SEAS D. Admin What he wants –One evaluation per student per class –Only valid students doing the evaluations –“Valid” results

The current system This is what Johnny sees: –Gets an

The current system

Current system problems The initial password is sent in the Initial attack can break in, create PIN, evaluate, and be all done. Original system was on blue.unix. We were able to hack into the system!

Sample evaluation “Comment1.9 : Dear XXXXXX, This system of evaluating is horrible. I am glad you know exactly when I submit my evaluation. The reminder e- mails really helped. Also the pin number with my login was a nice touch. Now you will never know it is me. No. This system of evaluating is horrible. The only thing more horrible was its hounding s.”

Other Schools RPI study says 85% use paper and pencil 2% are online MIT – uses certificates! JHU’s College of A&S – only asks for SSN!

Requirements/Suggestions Encrypted transactions. Evaluation and name are not linked. Isolation of database/server. IP restrictions. Ease of use. Analyze how many evaluations come from a given IP address in a certain amount of time.

Demo

Highlights of Prototype Implementation Intuitive web-based user interface Encrypted communications using Apache-SSL Eval ID links to classes, doesn't link to person 3-tier system- Browser + Apache-SSL/PHP + MySQL Access to results is fine-grained (coming soon)