COMP3445 Notices

Report 2 Release

Posted by Andrew Wong 🐻 Friday 09 October 2026, 12:46:30 AM, last modified Friday 09 October 2026, 12:47:43 AM.

Report 2 has been released (Due Week 7; 1st Nov 11.59pm)

Check out the Report 2 page for instructions.
To be clear - your deliverables are ONE report file, NO reflection required.

Focus on completing Report 1, and the related Week 3 (Windows) challenges before taking a look at this assignment

Report 1 is due this Sunday (11th October 2026 at 11:59pm AEDT) - submitted via Moodle
Combine both your report and reflection into one single PDF document.
If you are unable to submit via Moodle, email a copy of your submission to the class account at cs3445@cse.unsw.edu.au

Important: Next week's Wed lecture

Posted by Arash Shaghaghi 🎓 Thursday 08 October 2026, 05:11:38 PM.

Dear All,

Wes has a family emergency and is unable to run Wed 14th of October afternoon lecture at the usual time via Zoom. He will record the lecture and we will make it available by 6 PM of Wed next week. Our sincere apologies for this.

He will run a Q&A session in Week 7 (since Week 6 is flex week) to answer any queries you may have.

Thank you.

Arash as Course Convenor

Friendly reminder

Posted by Arash Shaghaghi 🎓 Friday 02 October 2026, 05:39:04 PM.

Dear All,

Just a friendly reminder: UNSW will be closed on Monday, 5 October, and there will be no lectures.

The next lecture for Digital Forensics is on Wednesday, 7 October, with Wes via Zoom.

Have a great long weekend.

Arash

Update for the 'real usb' challenges

Posted by Andrew Wong 🐻 Sunday 27 September 2026, 08:39:46 PM.

A copy of a working disk image for the Week 2 - Real USB challenges has been uploaded due to some compatibility issues reported by students. This should help resolve issues for challenge #5

real-usb.img (SHA256: f8cf0b97e93dc1c1c24fe11e3d98f3084412de31b9e69b827d15e9638cfb08c9)

Extension to Week 3 challenges

Posted by Arash Shaghaghi 🎓 Thursday 24 September 2026, 01:17:17 PM, last modified Thursday 24 September 2026, 01:17:29 PM.

Dear All,

We have decided to extend the Week 3 challenges' due date to the 11th of October, so you have more time to complete them.

We continue to monitor your progress and feedback in this course and make changes to improve your learning experience.

Best,

Arash

Week 2: Updates

Posted by Arash Shaghaghi 🎓 Monday 21 September 2026, 07:38:37 AM.

Dear All,

Welcome to Week 2 of Digital Forensics.

• Report 1 has been released.
• The Week 2 and Week 3 challenges have been released.

Please check your course outline for deadlines. For questions about the Week 2 and 3 challenges, the best support available is during labs. Once you have had some time to read through Report 1 , we will release a recorded video with some instructions on how to approach it, along with some suggestions. Probably by Wed.

For those of you joining the lecture today, see you at 6 PM.

Have a great week ahead.

Arash

Welcome to Digital Forensics 🫆

Posted by Arash Shaghaghi 🎓 Sunday 13 September 2026, 07:29:06 PM, last modified Sunday 13 September 2026, 07:29:55 PM.

Hello everyone,

I hope you're well-rested after the Term 2 break and looking forward to another very interesting term.

Please start by reading the course outline: https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP3445/26T3/outline

As with almost all CSE courses, we use WebCMS as our main LMS for course content, assessments, and announcements, and Discourse for the forum. You'll only need Moodle for two things: submitting assessments, which go through Turnitin, and picking up your marks and feedback.

We have two lectures this week.

• Monday 14 September, in person. I'll give you an overview of the course and how best to navigate it, along with some introductory material to set the stage. As you'll see in the outline, all Monday lectures are in person, in Electrical Engineering G22 (K-G17-G22).
• Wednesday, 16 September, online. My colleague Wesley Lacy (Executive Manager, Group Audit Technology, Legal Technology & eDiscovery at CBA, and a lecturer in this course) starts the Wednesday stream, which covers the technical content. All of Wesley's lectures are fully online over Zoom, so there's no room booked and no need to come in. The Zoom link is on the Lectures page of WebCMS and in the course outline.

Labs start on Tuesday, 15 September, and run through the week in our security lab at CSE (CybSK17G11). Check which stream you're enrolled in and go to that one.

Tutors matter a great deal in this course, so do work closely with yours as you take on the weekly challenges. Students in past offerings have told us consistently that the labs were what got them through the challenges and into good grades.

See you tomorrow evening.

Arash