Calendar and Readings
Mon., 28 Sep.: Welcome; systems background; RISC-V intro
Wed., 30 Sep.: Memory bugs and exploitation
- Aleph One: “Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit” (1996), in original formatting or corrected and reformatted
Mon., 5 Oct.: Legacy mitigations
- V. van der Veen, N. dutt-Sharma, L. Cavallaro, and H. Bos: “Memory Errors: The Past, the Present, and the Future” (2012)
Wed. 7 Oct.: Code reuse
- R. Roemer, E. Buchanan, H. Shacham and S. Savage: “Return-Oriented Programming: Systems, Languages, and Applications” (2012)
Mon., 12 Oct.: Control-flow integrity
- M. Abadi, M. Budiu, Úlfar Erlingsson, and J. Ligatti: “Control-Flow Integrity: Principles, Implementations, and Applications” (2009)
Wed., 14 Oct.: Introduction to JavaScript; interpreter implementation
- L. Peter Deutsch and A.M. Schiffman: “Efficient Implementation of the Smalltalk-80 System” (1983)
- C. Chambers, D. Ungar, and E. Lee: “An Efficient Implementation of SELF, a Dynamically-Typed Object-Oriented Language Based on Prototypes” (1989)
Mon., 19 Oct.: JavaScript interpreter exploitation (I)
- saelo: “The Art of Exploitation: Attacking JavaScript Engines” (2016/2021)
Wed., 21 Oct.: JavaScript interpreter exploitation (II)
- A. Burnett, P. Biernat, and M. Gaasedelen: “Weaponization of a JavaScriptCore Vulnerability” (2018)
Mon., 26 Oct.: Compartmentalization; confused deputy
- S. Narayan et al.: “Retrofitting Fine Grain Isolation in the Firefox Renderer” (2020)
Wed., 28 Oct.: Software fault isolation (SFI)
- Z. Yedidia: “Lightweight Fault Isolation: Practical, Efficient, and Secure Software Sandboxing” (2024)
Mon., 2 Nov.: (Future) ISA support for CFI and SFI
- “RISC-V Shadow Stacks and Landing Pads” (2023)
- S. Narayan et al.: “Going beyond the Limits of SFI: Flexible and Secure Hardware-Assisted In-Process Isolation with HFI (2023)
Wed., 4 Nov.: Microarchitecture; side channels
- Y. Yarom: “Microarchitectural Attacks” (2025)
Mon., 9 Nov.: Speculative execution
- L. Fiolhais and L. Sousa: “Transient-Execution Attacks: A Computer Architect Perspective” (2023)
Wed., 11 Nov.: Veterans Day holiday, no class
Mon., 16 Nov.: Future µarch side channels
- J.R.S. Vicarte et al.: “Opening Pandora’s Box: A Systematic Study of New Ways Microarchitecture Can Leak Private Data” (2021)
Wed., 18 Nov.: Browsers and the Same-Origin Policy
Mon., 23 Nov.: Attacks on ambient authority
Wed., 25 Nov.: Cross-site scripting
Mon., 30 Nov.: The post-Spectre Web
Wed., 2 Dec.: Recent developments; wrapping up
- P.A. Karger and R.R. Schell: “Multics Security Evaluation: Vulnerability Analysis” (1974)