Napier graduate wins Software Engineer
of the Year award
A Napier computing student has scooped a ScotlandIS Young
Software Engineer of the Year Award for his research into
hidden internet communications.
David Llamas (37), a BSc (Hons) in Software Technology graduate
from Barcelona, was recently presented with the £1,000
second prize at the Scotsoft event in Edinburgh.
David’s project – Covert Channels Analysis and
Data Hiding in the TCP/IP protocol suite – has demonstrated
that terrorists and criminals can breach security measures
and send messages hidden within seemingly innocent data communications
that cannot be detected by the UK’s intelligence agencies.
David’s research is a major step forward in creating
a system which could detect these hidden messages which would
be a huge boon to the global fight against terrorism.
His project has lead to two further research applications
by Napier and work with the Police Information Technology
Office which is responsible for developing systems which enhance
the detection of crime in the UK.
Dr Bill Buchanan, reader at Napier’s School of Computing,
who nominated David for the prize, said: “We
are extremely proud of David’s achievement and this
is a prestigious award for everyone involved. David’s
research has sparked huge interest and could lead to a system
being developed which could detect covert terrorist and criminal
activity.
“The School of Computing at Napier has some
of the most advanced networking equipment and software development
facilities, and has had research published in many respected
conferences and journals. It has also recently won several
national awards for excellence, and David is a fine example
of the quality of our students and research.”
David Llamas, Young Software Engineer of the Year award winner,
said: “I am delighted to have won this award. Internet
security and the hiding of information is an important area
of research which is not just of interest to intelligence
agencies and the police, but also to organisations affected
by industrial espionage.”
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Last
Friday I attended the Young Software Engineer of the Year Award
in the Sheraton Hotel in Edinburgh. I was lucky enough to supervise
an excellent Hons project by David Llamas. His project was so good,
in fact, that it was one of the finalists out of the thousands of
computing-related projects in Scotland [
