Team Sierra

Team Sierra is made up of Gabriella de Asis, Jordan Bradshaw, Kevin Khachatourians, David Macias, and Henry Reed as team leader.

During the first half of Fall 2020, we focused on preliminary research. During the course of our research, we found that there was little to no academic research into spyware and cyber security. Published papers were usually outdated, with universities still conducting research on signature detection when cybersecurity has moved on to behavior, or heuristic, detection. Most teaching and training on these topics are restricted by a paywall, an NDA, and various access controls. It became apparent that we would have to conduct our own analysis and prototyping in a lab environment to explore spyware and cyber security concepts not discussed in current academic papers.

The second half Fall 2020, we focused on designing Sierra, its framework and components. We also began to code Sierra’s smaller capabilities. Gabriella focused on webcam captures, Jordan on cookie captures, Kevin on screenshots and keylogging, David on capturing browsing history on Google Chrome, and Henry on Google Chrome cookie and password capture.

During the first half of Spring 2021, Gabriella focused on network analysis for Discord, Jordan focused on capturing emails on Gmail, Kevin on capturing microphone and speaker audio, David on the Sierra Server, and Henry on communication protocols and encryption.

During the second half of Spring 2021, Gabriella and Jordan completed the Discord message capture. With the audio capture complete, Jordan and Kevin implemented the Discord call audio captures. David continued work on the Sierra Server, completing the front end and is working with Henry to implement the middleware of the Sierra Server with the communication protocol. Henry continues to work on communications and is working with team members to consolidate Sierra Client.