• Policies
• Late Policy
• Academic Misconduct
• Cheating vs. Collaboration
• The Gilligan's Island Rule
• The Freedom of Information Rule
• Incomplete
• Academic Accommodations
• Communications
• Ethics
• Coursework

 

This special topics course is not (particularly) lecture-based, nor is it (primarily) focused around teaching particular topics; instead, the course is about learning by example (and counterexample) via immersion in academic research. While some mini-lectures or verbal explanations will be provided to contextualize the readings, part of acclimatizing yourself to reading academic papers is learning how to: 1) reason about a paper's contributions, framing, and study design even if you are not an expert in the subarea; and 2) look up information on your own if necessary to understand.

You may want to take this course if:

1. You want to learn more about research in computer security and privacy (and incidentally learn some more about computer security along the way);
2. You want to get more exposure to (one style of) research and the research process in computer science.

The course will focus heavily on reading and discussion of recent and/or classic academic papers from conferences such as USENIX, SOUPS, Oakland, CCS, and NDSS. There will also will also include a (larger) independent project and (smaller) mini-projects and assignments.

While this course will bear many similarities to the previous offering of CS 6964. Human-Centered Research: Security, Privacy, and Society (https://cs6964.wordpress.com/), it will not be identical in terms of organization or content.

Q: What is the difference between this class and CS 6490 (Network Security)?
Here is some info on the last offering of CS 6490: link.

Q: Can I take both?
If you mean do they teach different enough things that it's useful to take both, absolutely! If you mean in terms of graduation requirements, talk to Ann. :)

 

Policies

Late Policy

Please pay careful attention to the due dates of the assignments. For most assignments, if you hand in the assignment late, we will take off 20% for each day it is late. When computing the number of days late, we will round up; so an assignment turned in 25 hours late will be downgraded 40%.

 

Academic Misconduct

The School of Computing policy on cheating is here. If you don’t yet have one on file, you need to file a form acknowledging the policy with the SoC (available here).

Cheating vs. Collaboration

Collaboration is a very good thing. On the other hand, cheating is considered a very serious offense. Please don't do it! Concern about cheating creates an unpleasant environment for everyone. If you cheat, you risk losing your position as a student in the department and the college. The department's policy on cheating is to report any cases to the college cheating committee. What follows afterwards is not fun for anyone.

So how do you draw the line between collaboration and cheating? Here's a reasonable set of ground rules. Failure to understand and follow these rules will constitute cheating, and will be dealt with as per university guidelines.

The Gilligan's Island Rule

This rule says that you are free to meet with fellow student(s) and discuss assignments with them. Writing on a board or shared piece of paper is acceptable during the meeting; however, you should not take any written (electronic or otherwise) record about the assignment away from the meeting. This applies when the assignment is supposed to be an individual effort or whenever two teams discuss common problems they are each encountering (inter-group collaboration). After the meeting, engage in a half hour of mind-numbing activity before starting to work on the assignment. This will assure that you are able to reconstruct what you learned from the meeting, by yourself, using your own brain.

The Freedom of Information Rule

To assure that all interactions are on the level, you must always write the name(s) of who you talk with about your assignments (aside from course staff) on your assignment. These names should be listed in a prominent location at the top of the first page of your assignment.

Incomplete

University Policy states that an Incomplete grade may only be given when there has been a circumstance “beyond the student’s control,” (e.g., a death in the family, a serious accident, or a serious illness) and the student has completed 80% of the course requirements.

Academic Accommodations

The University of Utah is committed to the opportunity for success and equal access. Please let me know as soon as possible if you need any academic accommodations.

Communications

If you have questions that other students might want to see the answer to, please post it on the Canvas Discussion Board.

We will assume that you regularly monitor your campus email and Canvas (i.e., announcements, assignments, discussion board). There are ways to receive notifications when new material is posted, which you should consider setting up.

Ethics

Part of computer security is about thinking like an attacker. After all, it helps to be able to defend something if you can think of ways that someone might break it. As a result, some of the content that we will be discussing in this class - and some of the work that we will be doing - is about breaking things. I order to get a non-zero grade in this course, you must submit the Ethics Form.

 

Coursework

The course will consist of several main components:

• Reading research papers (usually one academic paper per class)
• Discussion of the research papers
• Short quizzes on the research papers
• Individual assignments on technical security topics (anticipate 4-8)
• More open-ended group projects

 

Grading will be based on:

• Presenting/discussing on paper panels (25%)
• In assigned slots
• By random selection
• Participation on discussion board (2.5%)
• Short quizzes (17.5%)
• (Non-project, Non-quiz) Assignments (10%)
• Projects (45%):
• Team formation
• Project proposal
• Background literature reading
• Project updates
• Poster session
• Project report