The System & Software Security Unit at Bristol is assessed either through exam XOR coursework. The exam option is worth 10 credits and the coursework option 15 credits. As per university guidelines “one credit point represents approximately 10 notional hours of student input”.
Please access the coursework brief using this link Coursework
Revision session will be published in due time on Teams COMSM0049: Systems and Software Security (Teaching Unit) 2023/24 (TB-1, A) Teams channel Link
The relevant people for this unit are:
| Person | Role | Contact |
|---|---|---|
| Sana Belguith | Unit Director | sana.belguith@bristol.ac.uk |
| Joseph Hallett | Lecturer | joseph.hallett@bristol.ac.uk |
You may need help at different stages of this unit. The most effective way to get the help you need is to:
Questions on the Teams channel should be your preferred course of action as every students on the unit can benefit from the answers (otherwise we end up saying the same thing repeatedly).
| Week | Lab | Lecture | Homework | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (26/09) | Lab 1: Assembly refresher | Lecture 1: Interesting bugs and where to find them (Joseph) | Homework | ||
| 2 (02/10) | Lab 2: Format strings | Lecture 2: Heap overflows and the Malloc Maleficarum (Joseph) | Homework | ||
| 3 (09/10) | Lab 3: Stack smashing | Lecture 3: Return oriented programming (Joseph) | Homework | ||
| 4 (16/10) | Lab 4: ROP | Lecture 4: Fuzzing (Sana) | Homework | ||
| 5 (23/10) | Lab 5: Fuzzing | Lecture 5: Access Control (Sana) | Homework | ||
| 7 (06/11) | Lab 6: Access Control | Lecture 6: Hardware Security (Sana) | Homework | ||
| 8 (13/11) | Lab 7: Sandboxing | Lecture 7: Rowhammer, Spectre and Meltdown (Joseph) | Homework | ||
| 9 (20/11) | Coursework | Coursework | |||
| 10 (27/11) | Coursework | Coursework | |||
| 11 (04/12) | Coursework | Coursework | |||
| 12 (11/12) | Revision | Revision |
As per appropriate for a master-level unit, students are expected to work independently outside of lectures and labs. Hence, reading materials and exercises are provided alongside labs and lectures. Students (especially those on the coursework option) are very strongly encouraged to do this work diligently during the first 7 weeks of the term. Students will struggle to complete their coursework on time if they haven’t engaged with the unit material beforehand.
This unit comes with reading material and homework (It is an Masters level unit, and one lecture a week is never going to be enough time to cover everything). Please make sure you go through it because it may crop up on any exam we set. We’ll try and keep it fairly light (read some papers, watch a video) and I’ll try and give you questions in the style of the exam in there. Ask in the labs if you want solutions, or try and mark them amongst yourselves (tip: if a question is worth 5 marks we generally are expecting 5 points to be made; if a question is worth 15 we’re expecting roughly three times the work, but are more interested in your reasoning and thinking: there may not be any definitively right answer!)