Students of INRTU School of Information Technology and Data Science are developing an anti-virus program as part of the Project Activities discipline
Students of INRTU School of Information Technology and Data Science are developing an anti-virus program. A team of 12 polytechnic students is supervised by Alexander Marinov of the Cyber Security Competence Centre.
The development of the information product is carried out within the discipline "Project Activities", which this academic year is included in the schedule of all third- and fourth-year students. The classes are held on Mondays.
According to Alexander Marinov, the anti-virus software will detect malicious elements by signature analysis:
"We have been developing this topic with graduate Andrei Gordin while preparing his graduate thesis. He is currently studying Artificial Intelligence in his master's degree program at INRTU. I decided to involve Andrei to conduct theoretical classes, so that he could share his valuable experience with the students and help them to master the material effectively.
The project group includes future specialists in information security, as well as students mastering automated control systems, information systems and technologies."
In the first semester, Polytechnic students are introduced to the Visual Studio 2022 product. The advantage of this environment is the scalability of the project to any level, the ability to perform refactoring between files, real-time teamwork, cloning of repositories, etc.
In theory sessions, students will also analyse virus signatures and existing anti-virus scanners.
In the second semester, polytechnic students will begin writing program code in C#. Detailed analysis of the code will help them find important analytical information, learn what changes have been made and what they have led to. Project-based activities help to identify talented students and give them an opportunity to work with the low-level programming language 'assembler'. The current relevance of "assembler" is due to the advent of microcomputers.
The next step is to test the effectiveness of the created anti-virus program under real conditions.
The project activities will enable the future specialists to acquire competencies in working with code, boot records, drivers. They will develop skills in the types of vulnerabilities in information systems and their protection.
Third-year student Gleb Dubodel, who is mastering information security at the university, said the anti-virus project is promising:
"This subject is related to my main field, so knowledge in this area will make me not only a more successful student but also a highly sought-after specialist on the labor market.
Since September I have been able to study low-level programming languages, the structure of networks and their operation methods, and thoroughly analyse the signature principle of various anti-virus methodologies".
Alina Starovoitova, a final year student, studied the structure of cloud services (code in the cloud) in detail thanks to her project activities:
"The discipline taught me a lot of practical skills in the field of information security. As a future specialist, I need to predict cyber-attacks and be well-versed in software products aimed at information protection".
In the future, Alina plans to successfully graduate from the university and work in the regional division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation.
