CS574 News

Final Grades

Everyone who provided me with an email address on the final exam should have received an email from me with their adjusted scores. If you did not receive an email from me, let me know and I'll look for a bounce.

If the grades for Midterm #1 (M1) and Midterm #2 (M2) do not match your exam, let me know immediately, and I'll triple-check my records.

The final score was adjusted to 500 points.

I've collected a list of pending news... I'll post 'em here sometime in the next few days.

Grades

I finally finished all the grading, adjusting the scores, etc., and entering them into the SDSU grading system. Later on, I will go through the exams and send email to those of you who provided email addresses, and will give you the scores I have.

There were nearly a dozen As, half-dozen Bs, a little more than a half-dozen Cs, and the rest were split equally between Ds and Fs. There wasn't much opportunity to put in a curve.

On Begging

Please don't beg me (via email) for grades. It won't help, it's unfair to your fellow students, and it offends me.

Turnin Acknowledgements

I have sent out (reply) the email acknowledgements. There are a half-dozen students who have NOT sent me the appropriate email.

This is the last day for the Assignment #2 paper.

Assignment #2 Update

I have established a sliding scale for assignment #2. I do not recommend that you use this late-turnin policy, but it's there just in case you need just a little more time.

Grading Update

Both midterms have been graded and returned. I'm still partway through assignment #1, but that won't be returned today.

Class News

Some news tidbits from this week...

Forensics -
Microsoft providing special forensics tools to law enforcement that "bypass" Windows security to allow easier collection of evidence.

Ethics -
Microsoft shutting down DRM servers - all music purchased from MSN Music becomes unusable. Ethics?

Espionage -
Germany caught attacking other governments' computers and reading their files and email.

News

Checking to see if Web pages are altered in transit between the server and the browser. Is this a security concern, or a feature of the Web?

A new crypto-gram newsletter is available.

News

Some news about the Mideast cable cuts that we discussed in class at the start of the semester.

Here's an article about using Microkernels for Security.

It seems that Microsoft is doing well when it comes to issuing patches.

A good example of not completely mediating user input. Oops.

A high-level description of a Flash exploit that is truly devious.

The Top Ten Passwords of 2008. It's almost like watching Spaceballs.

Assignment #2

I modified the Assignment 2 page to point to the Topics page.

I haven't yet filled in all the paper names, but at least there are the code names and topis. We have a few topics that are close, but not yet anything that seem to overlap.

As of this point, I believe I've sent an acknowledgement email to everyone who has sent me a submission (with the proper format). If your code name isn't on the Topics list, then double-check your sent archive.