The COAST Archive
Overview
The COAST Security Archive is possibly the largest collection of
security related material in the Internet. The archive was born as an
ftp
archive which contained several hundred megabytes of security
related papers, tools and FAQS. It has since expanded with the
addition of a Gopher interface and more descriptive Web pages.
This archive is a supported project of the COAST group in
the Department of Computer Sciences
at Purdue University. COAST
(Computer Operations, Audit, and Security Technology) is a
multi-project, multi-investigator research group focused on providing
security information and tools to the Internet community.
The maintenance of this archive is a complex task. This document
presents the basic concepts that must be thoroughly understood by all
maintainers of the archive. As new students and maintainers arrive,
this should be the first stop towards the successful immersion into
what some have described as an impossible task; mainly, the
maintenance and improvement of the Security Archive.
Information Management
During the development of the archive, one of the first problems we
were faced with was the efficient management of highly dynamic
information. The questions that typically arose were: Is this tool
in the archive? How do I find this tool in the archive? Who is
responsible for the addition of this tool to the archive? What is
this tool? and How do I find the author of this tool? We built
databases of file and author information and provided tools that
allowed users to quickly locate the desired tool or paper in the archive.
Click on the following to find out more...
Structure of the Archive
Tools used to build and maintain
the Archive
The Archive Index
Maintenance of the Archive
Problems and Pointers
Frequently Asked Questions
Built by Mark
Crosbie and
Ivan Krsul.
Security Archive Homepage.
COAST Project Page.
Purdue CS Dept page.
Last Modified: 17 March, 1995.
security-archive@cerias.purdue.edu (COAST Security Archive)