proposal

It is not always easy to determine how a distributed system will act when one or more of the nodes in the network become compromised by attackers. 

I aim to engineer a framework that can prototype a distributed system and simulate many standard attacks on each node in the network, such as the sending of arbitrary messages, and denial of service attacks. The framework will allow users to specify a network topology and install and execute arbitrary code onto each node in the network. I will be using Java to implement my framework, which has built in GUI and networking capabilities. 

The purpose of such an application would be to provide a simple way to test whether a distributed network is resistant to common vulnerabilities, without the need to spin up and attack the network directly.

It is important that the basic elements of the project be completed by the beginning of semester 2, i.e the GUI, CLI, and the creation of simple models. 

Draft 2:
A distributed system can be specified by a number of standard models. These describe the systems architecture (e.g the client-server model), the way in which each node will interact with each other, and the fault tolerance of the system. A distributed system is meant to work under a variety of such models.
I intend to build a framework that can prototype a distributed system, and simulate them under a variety of standard models. The framework will allow users to specify a network topology and install and execute arbitrary code onto each node in the network.
It will also allow the launching of some standard attacks, such as the sending of arbitrary messages and denial of service attacks, in order to test the behaviour of the system. I will be using Java to implement my framework, which has built in GUI and networking capabilities.
It is important that the basic elements of the project be completed by the beginning of semester 2, i.e the GUI, CLI, and the creation of basic architectural models. I will have the major interaction and fault models ready for testing by week 4 of semester 2, and I will have some standard attacks implemented by week 8.