CS253 Cyber Security

Autumn 2025 (Webpage under construction)

The course covers principles of information security. The focus is on how to build secure systems with a cutting-edge view. The range of topics is not limited to cyber security, but also includes system and architecture security. Many hands-on examples during the course will show how things go wrong when these principles are not followed. Note that this course is completely re-designed and newly renovated to cover the latest academic and industry breakthroughs, and the content is subject to change.

Administrative Information

Instructor	Yuan Xiao (email: xiaoyuan@shanghaitech.edu.cn)
Teaching Assistant	Yiting Chen (email: chenyt2024@shanghaitech.edu.cn)
Office Hours	TBD
Lecture Time	Mon & Wed 8:15–9:55 AM
Location	SIST 1A108
Piazza	https://piazza.com/shanghaitech.edu.cn/fall2025/cs253
Gradescope	https://www.gradescope.com/courses/1127321

Syllabus

The intended syllabus of the whole semester can be downloaded here. The contents may be subject to change during the semester.

Week	Topic	Slides (Monday)	Slides (Wednesday)
1	Introduction	Download
2	Control Hijacking Attacks and Defenses	Download	Download
3	Security Principles and OS Security	Download
4	Isolation and Sandboxing		Download
5	Microarchitecture I - TEE and Side-Channel Attacks	Download
6	Microarchitecture II - More Side-Channel Attacks and Transient Execution Attacks	Download
7	Web Security I - Model and Attacks	Download

Assignments

Homework 1: Register for the course at both Gradescope and Piazza, and complete a quick HW1 posted on Gradescope. DDL 9/21 (Sunday) 23:59.

Project 1:
- The requirements can be downloaded here.
- You will need a VM image downloadable here.
- And a starter code downloadable here.
- Please submit your solution on Gradescope (Project 1). DDL 10/8 (Wednesday) 23:59.

Homework 2: Posted on Gradescope already. DDL 10/24 (Friday) 23:59.

Grading

Homework (25%): 3 written HWs
Projects (45%): 3 single-person coding/experiment projects
Presentation (20%): Pick one topic, prepare a demo, and present
Participation (5%): Asking questions in Q&A of presentations
Attendance (5%): Grading the presentation of your peer students

Presentation Rules

1. Presentation Sign-ups

Each student should present ONLY ONE topic throughout the semester.
Candidate topics and lecture slides of the next week will be provided on Monday of the current week.
Sign up for your interested topic before the end of the Wednesday class, first come first serve.
We need to sign up 4 students for presentations each week. If we don't have enough volunteers, the instructor will need to do a random raffling on Wednesday evening to pick students to present on the following Wednesday.
[Important!] The syllabus of the whole semester can be downloaded here. It provides you with a rough vision of potential topics to be chosen from. You could sign up for a future week's topic ahead by emailing your instructor or asking during class time. This will exclude you from the raffling pool.

2. How to Do a Presentation

Presenter could choose either Monday or Wednesday class to do a 10-minute presentation + a 3-minute Q&A. Default option is Wednesday class.
Presenter MUST prepare a demo and a slide deck.
Usage of Internet materials (including open source code or slides) is NOT restricted.
Using AI to understand your topic or to prepare your demo/slides is allowed, and RECEOMMENDED.

3. How Presentations are Graded

In total 20 points for your presentation, considering both presentation and Q&A performance. 10 points are graded by your instructor and the other 10 points by your audience.
Each student must ask either (1) in total 2 questions throughout the semester, or (2) 1 relevant question that the presenter fails to answer, to get your 5 points of participation.
You must show up in the class to grade the presentation of your peer students for at least 10 times to get all 5 points of attendance. Each missing attendance will cost you 0.5 points to be deducted.

Academic Integrity Statement

This course deploys a special experimental learning method by encouraging students to research and study with AI and online resources. However, basic academic integrity rules still hold when the students complete their assignments. NO copy-paste is allowed, including but not limited to work of peer students, work of past students, AI-generated code or open-source code. Building your own work on top of online resources is permitted (as partial of your work), with modifications into your own version. Please keep a record of the reference materials you use, including AI chat history, open-source repository link and so on in case you need a rebuttal to justify your work. This course checks code repeating rate to detect copying behaviors. If your work is found greatly similar to that of your peer students, the course instructor will perform an investigation with you. If academic dishonesty is confirmed, you will receive 0 points to your cheating assignment plus a grade down in your total score as a penalty. If you receive three accumulative penalties, it will lead to a direct fail and be reported to the academic integrity committee of the school.