1. Phishing is a huge and rising danger for home Internet users. The Letterhead project is pursuing an innovative strategy to mitigate phishing attacks. Letterhead integrates into users’ existing email tools, and uses data derived from the structure of the Internet itself to determine whether an email links to a potential phishing site. The system uses a visual metaphor to communicate to users the legitimacy of links contained in email communication.

1. Most existing worm-containment systems produce many false alarms, meaning that network administrators have to manually determine whether or not a on their network is infected machine is infected and reverse the quarantine. The Mug Shots project takes a different approach to worm identification and containment, by analyzing worm behavior and then creating a unique visual “mug shot” of the worm based on its behavior. Just like police officials draw a sketch of the culprits by taking into account their physical characteristics, the Mug Shots tool represents the current network state in the form of a visualization that can be easily understood by network administrators.

1. Despite the increase in security automation for end-users, critical security decisions that can be made only by end-users continue to persist. For example, although some such firewalls “automate security” by connecting to a trusted server for default settings, all are designed to rely on user decisions in order to function properly. The Firefly project is creating a 2nd generation visual firewall that can support better decision making on the part of users. Firefly frames security decisions in terms of risk of actual potential losses they could incur as a result of poor security decision-making; the tool provides a visual  presentation of systems-related details that are necessary for good decision-making on the part of users.