Notices

  • Provisonal Marks released

    Posted by Adam Tanana Sunday 08 December 2024, 09:26:54 AM.

    Congratulations on finishing COMP6447. Hopefully you all found the course fun and rewarding.

    Special congrats to the top students this year

    • Daniel C
    • Jason L
    • Cyril S
    • Alexander B
    • Chris Y

    I've released provisional final grades on give (warning these might change).

  • Exam walkthrough later today

    Posted by Adam Tanana Friday 06 December 2024, 09:17:26 AM.

    Hey all. Congrats on completing COMP6447.

    I will try to get results out to you ASAP. In the mean time, I'll be running a quick help session exam walkthrough today at 2pm if you are interested/curious. I'll also release the solutions at that time.

    https://unsw.zoom.us/j/81509544301

  • 6447 exam skeleton

    Posted by Adam Tanana Wednesday 04 December 2024, 02:06:29 PM.

    Hey all

    The exam skeleton is now finalized. The binaries are available for download now from exam.6447.lol

    Please have a read of the exam instructions in preparation for tomorrow. I recommend also downloading the files before the exam incase of internet issues

  • COMP6447 Final Exam Detail, Help Sesh and Practice Exam

    Posted by Adam Tanana Wednesday 27 November 2024, 02:16:09 PM.

    Hey all, Hopefully studies are going well. Some updates

    There will be another help session this Friday at 6pm in Webster Theatre B.

    There is a practice final exam available at https://2023.exam.6447.lol /. I recommend attempting this after you are done studying each section of the course under timed conditions.


    The skeleton for the final exam is available at exam.6447.lol . Please read the instructions carefully and ask if you have any questions. The exam binaries and questions will be available for download soon (I will send another email).

    Please note the exam is in person. You should have been emailed your allocated seating. If you have not, please read carefully all instructions here . You must sit in your assigned seat, and have a form of ID for the invigilators to check.

    The exam will be run on your own machines. If you don't have a laptop - Tell me ASAP. There are no excuses on the day.

    The exam will start sharply at 9:55 AM. You must be ready outside the exam room by 9:30 AM. If you are late, you may miss key instructions

  • Help session

    Posted by Adam Tanana Saturday 23 November 2024, 10:15:38 AM, last modified Monday 25 November 2024, 08:49:33 AM.

    Hey folks. Hope exams and prep are going well.


    I'll be running a help session on Monday at 6pm in Webster Theatre B. Please come with questions.


    We will be releasing exam details, location, times and past exams soon so stay tuned

  • Midpoint fuzzer marks released

    Posted by Adam Tanana Wednesday 13 November 2024, 06:26:42 PM.

    Hi, I just emailed you all with your midpoint fuzzer marks.


    I think I may have made some mistakes and missed some emails, if so please reach out

  • Reminder: guest lecture in person only

    Posted by Adam Tanana Monday 11 November 2024, 06:46:37 AM.

    Hey folks. Reminder. Today's lecture will not be recorded. Please try to come in person

  • Help sesh - COMP6447

    Posted by Adam Tanana Thursday 24 October 2024, 07:27:08 PM.

    Hey y'all, I've booked Ainsworth 102 for a Help Session on Friday at 6pm. I'll stay as late as students have questions. Note: I won't be preparing content, this is purely going to be an open-air question/answer forum. Come with questions please :) Apologies if the time doesn't work for you. This session won't be recorded or live-streamed!

  • Course updates, Next week content and Guest lectures

    Posted by Adam Tanana Sunday 20 October 2024, 12:43:06 PM.

    Hey y'all.

    Some quick admin updates. We have marked the Wargames and midterm exam for the last few weeks, these should be available on Give.

    At this stage in the course, the content is going to start getting harder (Starting with ROP this week, and HEAP next week). I highly recommend you come and watch the lectures live. Ask questions live. ROP is a combination of all previous weeks content, plus some new techniques. We are over the halfway mark for this course, so it is expected you will have the skills to perform research and practice challenges and techniques on your own.

    The tutorials will not have time to go over lecture content if you did not attend the lectures this week. I have asked the tutors not to cover lecture content for students who have not watched the lecture content before attending the tutorial.

    Also we will be having a guest lecture in Week 10. Someone who works at <redacted> will be talking about awesome new techniques related to <redacted> . Due to the sensitive nature of their work, this won't be recorded . This will be an awesome sneak-peak into the world of vulnerability research, I highly recommend making plans to come and watch Week 10 in person.

  • Lecture 5 recording

    Posted by Adam Tanana Tuesday 08 October 2024, 07:56:15 AM.

    Recording avail at https://unsw.zoom.us/rec/share/TOvhxe9H7JpEYE6LOb0f_hJlSdyfi9dsbg1d4CKvJ0bPFNV1KB6Sd6Pgi_wO85vL.W6E-0nq9sQ-8e3is?startTime=1728283474000

    Passcode: j+fz7HX=

  • Week 5 lecture update

    Posted by Adam Tanana Monday 07 October 2024, 10:57:45 AM.

    Hey all,

    Instead of giving the lecture in person and releasing a recording, I'll be doing the lecture live on zoom, and releasing the recording after.

    The link to the lecture is https://unsw.zoom.us/j/86539900561 if you'd like to join live.

  • Midterm Wargame & Week 5 lectures

    Posted by Adam Tanana Saturday 05 October 2024, 01:22:28 PM.

    Hey all, some details about the upcoming midterm wargame.

    Details:

    • There will be 3 exploitation questions (buffer overflows, format string and/or shellcode only) to solve, and fetch flags from the server (similar to wargames)
    • All instructions are available on the exam website https://midterm.6447.lol/ . Make sure you have access to this site, and understand the instructions BEFORE beginning the exam.
    • Between Wed, 09 Oct 2024 09:00:00 AEDT to Fri, 11 Oct 2024 18:00:00 AEDT you must attempt and submit this exam. It is worth 10% of the final mark. All submissions must be made within 2 hours of beginning the exam. No late submissions are allowed.
    • Once you begin the exam (By pressing "Start"), the website will show you the password to decrypt the challenges, as well as the server Domain and Port for the challenges.You must submit within 2 hours of starting the exam
    • The challenge files will be made available soon.
    • Submission will be done using Give (Details will appear on the exam website). The format for submission is available on the exam website

    Practice Exam

    We have made a practice exam (That will look exactly like the midterm wargame this week) available at https://2023.midterm.6447.lol/ .

    Week 5 Lecture

    The lecture in week 5 falls on a public holiday. I will still give a lecture (live in person, streamed and recorded), but it is not compulsory to watch live. However, please make sure to watch the lecture before attending tutorials/wargames/midterm.


  • COMP6447 Help Session 2024-10-04

    Posted by Adam Tanana Wednesday 02 October 2024, 06:14:09 PM.

    Hey all,

    I've booked the Ainsworth 102 for a Help Session on Friday (2024-10-04) at 6pm. I'll stay as late as students have questions.

    Note: I won't be preparing content, this is purely going to be an open-air question/answer forum.

    Come with questions please :)

    • I won't be able to go over wargames for this week, but am happy to go over solutions for any previous week's wargames (if you'd like)
    • I am able to talk in general about solving anything (Format strings, BoF, ShellCode)
    • Can show tips for solving challenges (Reversing tips, Debugging Tips, Scripting Tips)
    • Anything else :)

    Apologies if the time doesn't work for you.

    This session won't be recorded or live-streamed!

  • Welcome to COMP6447

    Posted by Adam Tanana Thursday 05 September 2024, 07:13:02 PM.

    Hey everyone.

    Hope you are all super excited to take COMP6447 this term. Before we start the First Lecture, some quick admin to sort out

    Course Forum

    This year we will be using EdStem as the course forum. Please sign up and login to https://edstem.org/au/join/frsdUD . This will be the best place to get help from either your peers, tutors or me throughout the course. The best way to reach course staff will be either through Ed or via Email.

    Course Outline

    The course outline is available on WebCMS. Please review it, it has important information about the course content and examinations.

    Classes In Person

    The lectures for this term are on Mondays, and will be covering content that is critical to both the weekly tutorials, and weekly wargames. It is super important that you are able to attend lectures and tutorials where possible. There are no online classes this term (Please reach out if this is a problem ASAP). We will try to record all lectures and release them (But make no promises to release them before your tutorials)

    Some resources to look at before we begin

    To help you prepare for this course, we've come up with a list of helpful prerequisite knowledge that you should revise (or skim over for the first time) before starting the course. These include:

    • How process memory is laid out
      • pointers
      • endianness
    • Difference between regions of memory (stack, heap, text, data)
    • Virtual memory/page table
    • Difference between kernel vs user space
    • Familiarity with using Linux, and Linux general knowledge
      • Linux file system
      • system calls
      • etc.
    • Familiarity with using GDB and python

    If you aren't familiar with some of these topics, that's fine. I recommend reviewing them before starting the course to make your experience smoother.

    I also recommend you have access to a Linux machine, A Linux Virtual Machine (or docker contains), with PwnTools , PwnDBG and BinaryNinja installed. These will be required to do many of the challenges in this Course. If you have issues installing anything, that's fine (Lab 1 is about helping you get ready, so no need to panic if you are unsure about anything).


    Also, I've setup 4 polls under Activities to better guage everyone's understanding of different topcis. Please take a look when you get a chance.


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