Calendar and Readings
Mon., 5 Jan.: Welcome; Memory bugs and exploitation
- Aleph One: “Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit” (1996), in original formatting or corrected and reformatted
Wed., 7 Jan.: Mitigations; code reuse
- V. van der Veen, N. dutt-Sharma, L. Cavallaro, and H. Bos: “Memory Errors: The Past, the Present, and the Future” (2012)
Mon., 12 Jan.: Control-flow integrity
- M. Abadi, M. Budiu, Úlfar Erlingsson, and J. Ligatti: “Control-Flow Integrity: Principles, Implementations, and Applications” (2009)
Wed. 14 Jan.: 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 Jan.: Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, no class
Wed., 21 Jan.: JavaScript interpreter exploitation (I)
- saelo: “The Art of Exploitation: Attacking JavaScript Engines” (2016/2021)
Mon., 26 Jan.: JavaScript interpreter exploitation (II)
- A. Burnett, P. Biernat, and M. Gaasedelen: “Weaponization of a JavaScriptCore Vulnerability” (2018)
Wed., 28 Jan.: Compartmentalization; confused deputy
- H. Lefeuvre, N. Dautenhahn, D. Chisnall, and P. Olivier: “SoK: Software Compartmentalization” (2025)
- S. Narayan et al.: “Retrofitting Fine Grain Isolation in the Firefox Renderer” (2020)
Mon., 2 Feb.: Software fault isolation (SFI)
- Z. Yedidia: “Lightweight Fault Isolation: Practical, Efficient, and Secure Software Sandboxing” (2024)
Wed., 4 Feb.: (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)
Mon., 9 Feb.: Microarchitecture; side channels
- Y. Yarom: “Microarchitectural Attacks” (2025)
Wed., 11 Feb.: Speculative execution
- L. Fiolhais and L. Sousa: “Transient-Execution Attacks: A Computer Architect Perspective” (2023)
Mon., 16 Feb.: Washington’s birthday (observed) holiday, no class
Wed., 18 Feb.: 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)
Mon., 23 Feb.: Network security in a nutshell
Wed., 25 Feb.: Browsers and the Same-Origin Policy
Mon., 2 Mar.: Attacks on ambient authority
Wed., 4 Mar.: Cross-site scripting
Mon., 9 Mar.: The post-Spectre Web
Wed., 11 Mar.: Recent developments; wrapping up
- P.A. Karger and R.R. Schell: “Multics Security Evaluation: Vulnerability Analysis” (1974)