Ideas for a netsec project for a Java class?

I am in an intermediate Java class at school at we have to开发者_如何学编程 come up with an end of the semester project that combines everything we have learned thus far (threads, networking, i/o, etc). My interest really lies with network security so I was thinking I could do some kind of app along those lines.

My initial idea was a simple honeypot. Listen on some common ports and record the incoming requests, possibly spoof banners of older software versions (if thats possible).

As you can probably tell I don't have much experience designing larger apps and have a ~2 months to complete this with a partner.

Anyone have any suggestions that I could execute in Java and hopefully produce something cool in a reasonable amount of time given my experience?

Thanks for any help!!

You may implement a POP3 server so that you can see how others try to get "their mail". POP3 is a relatively simple protocol, and even the basic version is still in use today. The specification is clear and well written, so implementing it shouldn't be that hard.

Using that server, you can gather the usernames and passwords that "hackers" try. And you can give them access to random mails, seeing what they are interested in.

If you finish this project too soon and don't know what to do with your time, you can implement a POP3 proxy, so that you can access arbitrary sources of data like it were an email account, for example news sites, RSS feeds.