Your case study / project report will be due in July.

I will expect your report to be submitted on the evening of Sunday, July 7th. Please upload a single PDF through Gradescope.

Evaluation

I will be looking for the following characteristics when I evaluate your report.

Background

The report should describe all background information that the target audience would need in order to understand the report’s subject.

Target audience

Undergraduate students taking ECE 7420 who understand the fundamentals of computer security but who are not familiar with the specifics of your report’s subject

Summarization

Summarizes key background concepts concisely

Grounding

References appropriate literature as evidence rather than relying on bare assertions of truth and validity

Objectivity

Describes background material objectively and without personal opinion, e.g., "Alice et al. showed P" rather than "I think P"

Description

The report should describe the attack/event/technique in sufficient detail for the target audience to understand what happens/happened without necessarily being about to reproduce it.

Completeness

The attack/event/technique is described from "end to end" (the big picture), though not necessarily from "top to bottom" (with detail beyond what’s required to understand the significance of the subject)

Context

The report explains when the subject was created or occurred in a way that enhances the reader’s understanding of relevant actors' motivations (e.g., why the system was designed the way it was)

Detail

The description contains sufficient detail to understand the subject but not so much extraneous detail as to overwhelm or distract from the main point

Grounding

References appropriate literature as evidence rather than relying on bare assertions of truth and validity

Objectivity

Describes background material objectively and without personal opinion, e.g., "Alice et al. showed P" rather than "I think P"

Methdology (9823 only)

Graduate students describing their project should provide a clear and explicit description of the methdology they followed.

Conclusions

The report should draw conclusions about the subject. What is the significance of the attack/event/technique? What are the ongoing implications, if any?

Claims

The report makes claims about the significance of its subject

Measure

Claims are measured and not exaggerated (e.g., "the most significant attack ever to affect a computer")

Grounding

All claims are grounded in evidence and reasoning

Non-originality

All evidence that supports the conclusions is introduced before the Conclusions section (e.g., the Conclusions do not cite new references)

References

The report should build on the references that were included in the proposal. Some proposals contained sufficient references; others require more or higher-quality references than their original proposals cite.

Quality

The report includes at least one (or, depending on the subject, more) high-quality reference from academic peer-reviewed literature

Diversity

The report includes references from multiple sources and/or perspectives

Durability

Malleable sources (e.g., user-editable content or personal websites) are not used as primary sources

Formatting

Your submission should be no more than 5 pages for undergraduate case studies and no more than 7 pages for graduate projects. I expect submissions in the "IEEE Transactions" style:

  • You can use the charged-ieee template in Typst

  • Overleaf templates

  • Other LaTeX

  • Word template

    Structure

    The report is well-structured in sections and subsections (as appropriate), including (at minimum) a title, abstract, introduction, conclusion and list of references

    Identity

    The report’s author, context (e.g., course) and purpose are clear

    References

    References are formatted according to the IEEE citation and reference styles

    Legibility

    The report uses appropriate fonts and styles (e.g., headers) to help the reader follow its structure