Below follows a day-by-day calendar for the class, including reading assignments, lecture topics, and courseworks. Lecture notes will be posted immediately after each lecture.
Class meetings consist largely of discussions of research papers. They are designed under the assumption that students have already read the assigned papers. If you do not read the papers that appear on a day of the calendar before that day's lecture, you are likely to have difficulty following the lecture and discussion.
N.B. that all assigned readings are examinable.
| Monday | Wednesday |
|
5th Oct Course Introduction; Lecture Notes: Lecture Notes: |
7th Oct Design: Worse Is Better; Reading: Worse Is Better Lecture Notes: |
|
12th Oct No lecture today! |
14th Oct No lecture today! |
|
19th Oct NFS Reading: NFS Case Study (accessible only by UCL students) Reading: Design and Implementation of the Sun Network Filesystem Lecture Notes: |
21st Oct RPC and Transparency; Mark Handley's Intro to C for Java Programmers Coursework 1 out: Programming a Distributed Tickertape Lecture Notes: |
|
26th Oct Ivy: Distributed Shared Memory Reading: Ivy Lecture Notes: |
28th Oct Two-Phase Commit Lecture Notes: |
|
2nd Nov Paxos Reading: Paxos Lecture Notes: |
4th Nov Bayou: Weak Connectivity and Update Conflicts Reading: Bayou Lecture Notes: |
|
9th Nov Reading week; no lecture today! |
11th Nov Reading week; no lecture today! |
|
16th Nov GFS: The Google File System Reading: GFS Lecture Notes: Coursework 1 Due, 11 AM |
18th Nov RouteBricks: Cluster-Based IP Router Reading: RouteBricks Lecture Notes: |
|
23rd Nov Introduction to Security; Lecture Notes: |
25th Nov Cryptographic Primitives I Lecture Notes: |
|
30th Nov Cryptographic Primitives II Lecture Notes: The Kerberos Authentication Service Reading: Kerberos Lecture Notes: |
2nd Dec Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Lecture Notes: Coursework 2 out: Security Problem Set |
|
7th Dec Reasoning Formally about Authentication: TAOS Reading: TAOS Lecture Notes: |
9th Dec Software Vulnerabilities and Exploits Reading: Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit Reading: Exploiting Format String Vulnerabilities Reading: Once Upon a free() Lecture Notes: |
|
14th Dec Preventing Exploits Reading: TaintCheck Reading: PaX Overview Reading: ASLR Overview Reading: Limits of Address Space Randomization Lecture Notes: |
16th Dec Containing Buggy Code: Software-based Fault Isolation Reading: SFI Lecture Notes: Lecture on Friday, 18th Dec, 4 PM, Bentham House SR3: OKWS: Approximating Least Privilege in a Real-World Web Server Reading: OKWS Lecture Notes: Coursework 2 Due: noon, 18th Dec |