CS 4440: Introduction to Computer Security


Final Exam and Practice Exam

Final Exam: There will be one exam covering all course material, weighted 35% of your course grade, held on Tuesday, December 10 from 1–3 PM in WEB L105 (same room as lectures). You are permitted one 8.5"x11" cheat sheet with handwritten/typed notes on both sides. Accommodations must be granted and administered via Utah's Center for Disability and Access; students with accommodations must schedule their exams through the CDA.

Practice Exam: To help you prepare for the final, we make available a practice exam. We recommend that you treat it like the real exam: you may refer to your cheat sheet, but limit yourself to 2 hours. The final lecture will serve as an in-class review covering the solutions to the practice exam. Solutions will be discussed in-class only—do not skip this lecture!

Click the above image to access the practice exam.

Programming Projects (via Canvas)

Instructions: There will be four programming projects that will count for 50% of your course grade (12.5% each).

Unless otherwise indicated, you may work solo or in a team of up to two. You may consult general reference material, but you may not collaborate outside your team. The material you turn in must be entirely your team’s work, and you are bound by the Student Code. It is recommended that you start early and attend office hours to receive extra help from the course staff.

Once grading has been completed, we will distribute a Regrade Request form via Piazza. Note that only autograder errors are eligible for regrades; any failure to follow assignment instructions, formatting, or any other policies are ineligible for regrades.

Assignment Deadline (by 11:59PM)
Project 1: Crypto Thursday, September 19
Project 2: AppSec Thursday, October 17
Project 3: WebSec Thursday, November 7
Project 4: NetSec Thursday, December 5

Weekly Quizzes (via Canvas)

Instructions: Each week, we'll assign a short quiz on Canvas to encourage you to keep up with the material and gauge your understanding of both lectures, totalling 10% of your course grade. Quizzes will be released immediately after Tuesday's lecture, and due the following Monday by 11:59PM. Deadlines are strict—late submissions are not accepted. We'll drop your lowest score.

Lecture and Online Participation (via PollEverywhere and Piazza)

To foster learning, we expect students to participate both in-person during lecture and online via Piazza. Participation will be weighted 5% of your overall course grade, based on the following weighing scheme:

Lectures: We'll log participation via PollEverywhere. To get points, you must be logged-in as your UID (i.e., u#######@utah.edu). We'll drop three absences at zero penalty. We'll track this automatically—you don't need to notify us about using any of your absences.

Piazza: We'll use Piazza as our main discussion board. While course staff will always offer help, we also expect students to regularly contribute to their peers' learning by providing helpful conceptual explanations or educational resources. At the semester's end, we'll award the top-10 student contributors an additional 5 extra credit points to their participation grades. Online interaction must abide by all Course Policies; you may discuss high-level concepts, but are prohibited from sharing code outside of your team.

Wiki Contributions: The CS 4440 Wiki is now open-source! We'll award significant student contributions in the form of new pages an additional 1 extra credit point to their participation grades. Prospective contributions must be cleared with the instructor before starting.