Course syllabus

Course organization

Learning activities and resources

This is as a project course. The main task of the course is to produce and present a case study report. In order for you to succeed with this we provide material and learning activities to help. The project planning and execution is however entirely on you. 

  • The schedule can be found here. Lectures and seminars are planned for physical attendance but will normally also be connected to Zoom (https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/62309989525 , Passcode: KTH-EP279) at best effort. However, guest lectures are either or. The first lecture is recorded and provided as course material. No other lecture or seminar is recorded.  
  • Some seminars are used as Q&A sessions. Instructions for these can be found here.
  • We provide discussion fora for administrative and course content topics where you can post questions. 
  • There is a voluntary peer review seminar. 
  • Even if all assignments are individual, collaborating with others can be good. We encourage you to self-organize study groups.
  • This page gathers all the course material. 

Assignments

The purpose of the course assignment is to give skills in, and understanding of, the area of security analysis of large-scale computer systems. More specifically to learn a methodology, threat modeling, to assess cyber security risk of a (large-scale) IT system. The assignment, your project, is designed to be as realistic as possible. This means that not all information needed to solve the assignment is provided in the description. It is therefore necessary for you to make assumptions that are realistic as well as seek new information in order to pass the assignment. 

The first thing you need to do is to choose what organisation you will represent and thus do the threat model of. You are free to choose what type of organisation you want. One encouraged approach for choosing your case is to pick a cybersecurity incident reported in the media and study what actually happened as well as exploring and imagining what could have happened. 

The course assignments are all carried out individually; this includes:

With an option to also take part in the following activities:

The grading of the main project is described here.

Deadlines for handing in the assignments are found on the respective assignment submission blocks in Canvas.

Plagiarism and cheating

Overall this course follows the EECS code of honour. Of particular importance is "Rule 2: In any assessment, every student shall honestly disclose any help received and sources used".

Written assignments

For the written assignments it is key to avoid plagiarism. The main principle behind plagiarism is that you are responsible and accountable for what you submit as your work. Letting others (in particular the teachers) think that something you submitted was your work when in fact it was not, is plagiarism. It is your responsibility to make sure that no one makes that mistake. So be clear with references to others when you are using work and ideas from others.

The use of references is mandatory. When you use a fact from some source you should include a reference to this source. Use references according to this or some similar standard but be consistent. For instance:

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”Early assessment of system characteristics in software projects is one of the main concerns of the discipline of software architecture [1]. When putting the software architecture in a business context it is common to speak of enterprise architecture [2].”

List of references:

[1] Heineman, G., W. Councill (Eds), Component-based software engineering: Putting the pieces together, Addison-Wesley, 2001.

[2] Wikipedia: Enterprise Architecture, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_architecture, accessed 2012-03-18

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When solving the project assignments co-operation between individuals is allowed and even encouraged. With respect to generative AI and large language models (chatGPT etc.) they are allowed and can be used freely, again also encouraged. However, we require you to give an account for what tools you used and how (see assignment descriptions). 

However, the above statement still holds: what you submit must be your original work as a whole. So you for instance need to fact and sanity check material from your co-pilot tools. And any plagiarism will result in an immediate failing of the assignment in addition to a written report to KTH’s central disciplinary committee. This means that all students should write their own reports. You are not allowed to copy text from other person and you are not allowed to copy text from the Internet. If you want to use a quote from a source, it must be clearly indicated that it is a quote. The reports will be checked with respect to plagiarism using automated scanners.  

For general information about plagiarism and how to avoid it see this page. If you are in doubt, post a question in the Discussion section on Canvas or contact the teachers directly.

Administration

The course teachers are located at Teknikringen 33. If you have any course administrative issues the easiest way to contact us is by Canvas or email. However, when it comes to content and project planning related topics we would like to avoid individual emails and use the interaction means as part of the learning activities planned, see above.

Any complaints regarding the grading of the assignments should be sent to the course responsible in an email no later than one week after the result has been posted.

Disability

If you have a disability, you may receive support from Funka, KTH’s coordinator for students with disabilities, see https://www.kth.se/en/student/stod/studier/funktionsnedsattning/funka-1.953214 . Please inform the course responsible if you have special needs and show your certificate from Funka.

  • Support measures under code R (i.e. adjustments related to space, time, and physical circumstances) are generally granted by the examiner.
  • Support measures under code P (pedagogical measures) may be granted or rejected by the examiner, after you have applied for this in accordance with KTH rules. Normally, support measures under code P will be granted.