@tame has the real recommendation, but you seem concerned about you classes so here are some projects or reading topics that would give you mastery in your next classes. A lot of ths might not make sense ill the end of next semester

Databases: Make a mockup website for a store with a backend database that includes products and user shopping carts, i.e. try to think what a amazon or such database should look like to be scalable from five products to five-million. Database should be Boyce-Cod Normalized. Diagram the database before you start the project. (This is a valuable skill for any new project)

Operating Systems: Review your C or C++ enough that you can use OS semaphores for thread control. Asuming a unix server for the projects keep die.net man pages in your bookmarks.

Algorithms and Complexity: Regex learn what properly is part of a regex as Deterministic finite automota, how does that differ from a context free grammer, what makes a system touring complete? If you read scifi you've probably theard how P=NP would break cryptography, understanding that question and being able to classify a set of written instructions into one of the formal complexity bins is a lot of the class, that and operating the problems.

Systems Programming Not surge if this is your assembly course or not, if it is start building simple assembly programs. Learn to do hex in your head and get a hex calculator if the class has quizzes and allows is.

Security classes: Do you know your 7 layer OSI model? Can you explain asymmetric key encryption and how that differs from non-repudiation signature of a asymmetrically signed email.

Systems Engineering: Long documented group project, demonstrating how to get the cutomer to give you programmable requirements. If you get to pick teammates start picking now. You should learn to chant MVP (Minimum Viable Project)

Haven't don it yet, still thinking it through. It'd probably be a hash not a full encryption.

I'm going to be using the PGP signing model. If you've had a job where you could sign or encrypt messages in outlook, this is signing.

So Users post is hashed by their private key in the browser plugin (big technical question here if chrome will let a plugin acces a dongle, or if it has to be dangerously kept in the browser) . The hash is shown as a link with their username. Other plugin users will see a green check if hash matches the message, or people who do PGP the slow way can get the public key registered for the account from a central server, if I can use an existing key repository so much the better (no server to support and whatever I charge just goes to beer money).

shrug this won't be PGP encrypted traffic just PGP signed traffic, sides the point of this is to detect "stealth" edits by someone else than the original user.

I'm planning on auto generating and registering the keys, that's one of the hard but tractable problems but I may have to go for something asymmetric but weaker if it significantly affect UI. Yes the initial key distribution for a browser plugin will be vulnerable, but this is intended to be a key set for a commenting account, not your identity.

Edit: Grammer