CS 4401 (A10): Software Security Engineering
Project 4: TurnOut-C

This project is a C-based version of the turnout assignment.

There are three separate deliverables for this project, each due at the start of class (via web-Turnin) on the specified date:

TurnOut-C is available as another VMware image for this class (/home/public/CS-440x/turnoutc). Log into the image as "student" with username "WormSplurt". You'll see a link to the executable on the desktop. Open a terminal window and navigate to the desktop. You can then launch the turnout application via the command line.

We will provide a password to access the source files after the blackbox deadline.


For the Attack Due Dates

Turn in a text or PDF file (no doc files, please) with two main parts: a description of your attack strategy (what you looked for and what you tried) and a list of attacks you launched against the system. For each attack:

  1. Give concrete instructions to conduct it (we should be able to follow your steps exactly to reproduce the attack).
  2. Indicate whether the attack was successful.
  3. For the whitebox attacks, if an attack was inspired by the code instead of your attack strategy, also indicate what you saw in the code that led you to construct the attack.

Each attack you list should be qualitatively different. Multiple versions of the same attack will cost you points. Attacks are the same if they exploit the same vulnerability with the same result (ie, both use code injection with the same constructs in the same field to achieve the same goal). If you list multiple attacks that look similar but you think are not, give us a sentence or two of justification.


For the Patch Due Date

Submit a zip file containing edited versions of the source code and a README.txt file. Your README should describe each edit you made at a high level (such as "added filtering to the X input") and the class of attacks that edit is designed to mitigate. Your goal is to fix the code to avoid as many attacks as possible, not just the attacks that you personally identified for the first two deadlines.


Grading

In grading this assignment, we will look for:

We will not announce a number of attacks that you should aim for because real-world systems don't come with this information. A comprehensive and systematic attack strategy is your best evidence for the quality of your work on this assignment (it also helps us gauge your respective abilities in identifying vulnerabilities and crafting exploits).


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