MSc Dissertation: Exploring the visualisation of hierarchical cybersecurity data within the Metaverse
metaverse MSc · 8 comments · 400 words · read ~917 times.
Well gang, I did it! After two years I've finally finished my MSc!
My final project was a 10,901 word epic about... The ✨Metaverse✨.
Have I gone a little bit peculiar? No. I don't think so. I was advised to pick a project which would sustain my interest for 6 months. So I chose something which would have lots of modern papers to read. And, more importantly, justify me buying a new toy to play with0!
I was delighted and overwhelmed that it received a score of 80% - taking my overall grade to a Distinction. Nice 😎
What was it about
Have you ever had a spreadsheet that was too large to fit on your monitor? Have you ever needed to explore a database full of complex relational material, but felt restricted by your screen's size?
That's a problem that we regularly face at work. So what's it like to view and manipulate data in the Metaverse?
Do people enjoy the experience? Do they find it useful? Does it cause them physical distress? What are their attitudes to the Metaverse in general? Is this the future?
The answers were: yes, maybe, not really, mixed to poor, possibly.
Read all about it
I've released the paper as Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial.
You can read my dissertation online.
Or, you can download the following formats:
Or you can grab the MarkDown or HTML from my open source repository.
Publication?
I've no idea how I properly publish something like this. I guess I need a DOI and to submit it somewhere? If you have any experience in this area, please let me know.
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I bought a Quest 2, using my own money, from a friend who was bored of it. No taxpayer money was spent. ↩︎
Using Pandoc to format a Dissertation from Markdown to HTML, PDF, and ePub
I got a DOI from arXiv for my MSc!
MSc Managed
@Edent Thanks for sharing that, I look forward to having a read through it.
Would you welcome any questions that arise from reading it? I'll probably have some, but I don't want to bother you if it would just be an annoyance.
@PlaneSailingGames all sensible questions welcome! Either here, the blog, or GitLab issues.
@Edent As a proper academic 👨🏫, you want citations, so you want your work to be found. Your uni should host your work somewhere, but you can also submit it to https://arXiv.org, where you get a DOI for free: https://blog.arxiv.org/2022/02/17/new-arxiv-articles-are-now-automatically-assigned-dois/. Most academics are lazy, so you want to be indexed by Google Scholar, which you get with arXiv, too. Google Scholar will also allow you to merge the uni-hosted publication and the arXiv one for your Scholar profile (e.g., https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=K3TsGbgAAAAJ&hl=en). arXiv.org e-Print archive
@Edent congrats! Reminds me of MozDef where former Mozilla colleague @0x7eff used to visualize SIEM (IDS?) findings in a 3d space. 🙂
@freddy @Edent Nice! love a good visualization!
yeah, it was ogres representing attackers fed by mozdef/siem
Always wanted to do 3D/VR with an omnidirectional treadmill 🙃
@Edent Very cool! DNS data does seem like a good fit for that kind of hierarchical visualization.
You might find the VR version of Unfurl interesting. It's a tool for parsing and extracting bits of info from URLs (primarily in 2D), but I made a 3D version of it as well.
An example URL: https://dfir.blog/unfurl-3d/?url=https://mastodon.social/@Edent/110179962664749357
Steve Flanagan says:
Well done Terence. Late to the party but I found your blog when looking for tips on the EPA Professional Discussion - which were very useful. In fact I was on a couple of early modules with you. I've not long done my EPA Discussion despite having my graduation ceremony in November!! A very long story but involves QA being really bad (at times shockingly so) and Northumbria University being excellent.
@edent says:
Congratulations Steve! So pleased that the tips were useful. And, yes, QA were utterly useless.
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