Nowadays, cyberattack incidents are happening on a daily basis. As a result, the demand for a larger and more challenging workforce is increasing. To handle this demand, academic institutions offer cybersecurity courses and degree programs into their curricula; however, more efforts are needed to address the high demand of the cybersecurity workforce. This work aims to bridge the gap between workforce shortage and the number of qualified graduates to fill the positions. We approach this by introducing cybersecurity concepts at the early stage of undergraduate curricula of computer science and engineering programs. Secure programming is critical as many cybersecurity incidents happen due to software vulnerabilities. However, most UG-level programming courses pay little attention to secure programming practices. As a result, many students graduate with limited knowledge of security vulnerabilities that might plague the developed software. Our goal in this work is to introduce secure programming at introductory level programming courses so that students should be aware of cybersecurity issues and use this security mindset in advanced level courses and projects in their degree programs. To accomplish this goal, we developed intuitive and interactive modules emphasizing secure programming in C++ and Java courses to help students become secure software developers. These modules will be used alongside the coursework to emphasize certain vulnerabilities within the programming environment of a specific language and allow students to learn cybersecurity topics, enforcing a solid foundation and understanding. We developed cybersecurity educational modules for C++ and Java as they are amongst the popular languages and used in introductory programming courses. While designing these modules, we kept in mind that the topics must be relevant to real-world issues in the software industry. We used a variety of resources and benchmarks to ensure the authenticity of our chosen topics, including Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) and Common Vulnerability and Exposures (CVE). While choosing module topics to develop, we had some restrictions. For example, the topics must be introductory and easy to understand. These modules are geared towards freshman or sophomore-level UG students who have just started programming. The developed security modules have four components: power-point slides, lab description, code template for the lab, and complete solution. The complete solution for each module will be provided to the instructors to check students’ work if they adopt the modules in their courses. The modules developed for a C++ programming course include labs on input validation, integer overflow, random number generation, function call with incorrect argument type, and dangling pointers. In Java, we developed lab modules for input validation, integer overflow, null object reference, random number generator, and data encapsulation.
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Mini-projects based Cybersecurity Modules for an Operating System Course using xv6
Cybersecurity continues to be a critical aspect within every computing division, especially in the realm of operating system (OS) development. The OS resides at the lower layer above the hardware in the computing hierarchy. If the layers above the OS are well hardened, a security flaw in the OS will compromise the resources in those higher layers. Although several learning resources and courses are available for OS security, they are taught in advanced UG or graduate-level computer security classes. In this work, we develop cybersecurity educational modules that instructors can adoptin their OS courses to emphasize security in OS while teaching its concepts.
The goal of this work is to engage students in learning security aspects in OS, while learning its concepts. It will give students a good understanding of different security concepts and how they are implemented in the OS. Towards this, we develop security educational modules for an OS course that will be available to the instructors for adoption in their courses. These modules are designed to be used in a UG-level OS course. To work on these modules, students should be familiar with C programming and OS concepts taught in the class. The modules are intended to be completed within the course of a semester. To achieve this goal, we organize them into three mini-projects witheach can be completed within a few weeks. We chose xv6 as the platform due to its popularity as an educational OS for developing the modules.
To develop the modules, we referred to the recent version of a popular OS textbook for the security concepts. The topics discussed in it include authentication, authorization, cryptography, and distributed system security. We kept our educational modules mostly aligned with these topics except distributed system security. We also included a module for implementing a defense mechanism against buffer-overflow attacks, a famous software vulnerability. We created three mini-projects for these modules, each accompanied by proper documentation and a GitHub repository. Two versions are created for each project, one for a student’s assignment available in the repository and another as a solution version for instructors. The first project implements a user authentication system in xv6. Students will implement various specifications such as password structure with encryption and programs such as useradd, passwd, whoami, and login. The implementation guidelines are provided in the documentation, along with skeleton code. The authorization project implements the Unix-style access control system. In this project, students will modify and create various structures and functions within the xv6 kernel. The last project is to build a defense mechanism against buffer-overflow using Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). Students are expected to implement a random number generator and modify the executable file loader in xv6. The submission for each project is expected to demonstrate the module behavior comparable to relevant systems present in production grade OS, such as Linux.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2021264
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10427424
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ASEE Annual Conference proceedings
- ISSN:
- 1524-4644
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 472
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
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