The course covers measurement methodologies for understanding complex Internet phenomena and behaviors including the spread of vulnerabilities, remote network topologies, attack patterns, content popularity, Internet censorship, service quality, adoption of security systems, tools for efficient measurements, large-scale data analysis, stats, reproducibility of results, and ethical considerations.
The 20% on reading responses will be distributed across all the papers we discuss in class. The reading response is not a summary of the paper, rather a critical review. This review includes the paper's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the student's own opinion about the paper's motivation, methodology, evaluation, and findings. The deadline for emailing the reading response is five minutes before the beginning of each class (i.e., Thursday at 2:30pm), for all nine student-led classes (i.e., Weeks 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, and 12; see outline below).
The 15% of in-class involvement will likewise be distributed across the entire course, 1.67% each class for all nine student-lead classes. You need to be actively involved in the discussions, e.g., asking questions, and commenting on the explanations made by the discussion leader or project presenter. All students are required to read and understand the papers being discussed in class, as illustrated by the above requirement of reading responses.
The 25% paper discussion lead is merited based on the students' qualities of presenting papers. Your presentation needs to be as detailed as possible. The presenter/leader must understand the paper quite well, and prepare a slide deck to present a 30-45 minutes presentation explaining the paper. Make sure to cover clearly the paper's objectives, the aspects it is trying to measure, the evaluations used (if any), precautions the authors have taken to (1) ensure the reproducibility of their findings and/or (2) address ethical considerations. Review this guide to a good presentation (by Professor Püschel, ETH Zürich). Each student is required to sign-up for two papers to present throughout the term. Each presentation is worth 12.5%, which will be commensurate with: the depth of your technical understanding (6%), the quality and professionalism of the presentation (4%), and question handling (2.5%). Selected papers do not have to be on the same day; they could be, but it might be a lot of work for a student to present two papers on one day. The deadline for signing-up to leading two paper discussions is Thursday, September 14. Papers (in the outline below) under "Additional Readings" are optional, but if you like to choose any of these to discuss as a mainstream paper of a class, let me know.
Finally, the 40% of the project is distributed as follows: 6% planning (including in-class pitch and project proposal), 5% presentation, and 29% on the final report. Every student is required to think about project ideas and discuss them with me. Upon receiving a verbal agreement, students will be required to submit a written 1-page project proposal detailing the project objectives, methodology, and citing relevant literature. The deadline for establishing your project idea, and emailing me the written project proposal is October 5. Note that in order to meet this deadline, students will be required to discuss ideas with me early on before they write a proposal. Start thinking about projects early in the course. Don't leave it to the last minute. To decide on a project topic, you may build-upon security research published in previous IMC venues: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018. You can also lookup papers in the last 2-3 years from IEEE S&P (2023, 2022, 2021), USENIX Security Symposium (2023, 2022, 2021), NDSS (2023, 2022, 2021), and ACM CCS (2022, 2021, 2020). Other venues including: Springer Passive and Active Measurements (PAM), Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis (TMA), and ACM Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNext). There are also several occasional measurements workshops like NDSS MADWeb, FOCI, WPEZ. Everyone must then present an 8-minute project pitch in class, ideally using a single slide, on October 12. Finally, the deadline to email the final project report is December 20, at 11:59pm EST (Ottawa time). You are highly encouraged to use LaTeX to prepare your final report. However, feel free to use any document-generation tool, so long as you email me a PDF of your report. The report should not exceed 15 pages in the standard IEEE double-column conference format.
Summary of deliverables: In summary, over the course of the term, each student will deliver:
If you are unsure of the expectations regarding academic integrity (how to use and cite references, if unauthorized collaboration with lab- or classmates is permitted (and, if so, to what degree), then you must ASK your instructor. Sharing assignment or quiz specifications or posting them online (to sites like Chegg, CourseHero, OneClass, etc.) is ALWAYS considered academic misconduct. You are NEVER permitted to post, share, or upload course materials without explicit permission from your instructor. Academic integrity offences are reported to the office of the Dean of Science. Information, process and penalties for such offences can be found on the ODS webpage.
Late assignments are never accepted for any reason. Assignments submissions are handled electronically (i.e., through Brightspace) and there is no "grace period" with respect to a deadline - an assignment submitted even one minute after the deadline is late and will receive a mark of zero.
Many of the assessed activities in this course were designed to be completed by an individual working alone. Unless it is explicitly stated otherwise, the use of any will be considered academic misconduct. This includes, but is not limited to, chatbots (e.g., ChatGPT, Google Bard, Bing Chart), research assistants (e.g., Elicit), and image generators (e.g., Stable Diffusion, Dall-E).
References to any material you use but did not originate must use the IEEE/APA/MLA citation style. Failure to reference materials correctly can result in severe penalties, and the use of manufactured (i.e., falsified) or misleading references will be treated as evidence of plagiarism and considered academic misconduct.
Everything you submit for evaluation (e.g., assignments, quizzes, tutorials, and examinations) must be the result of your own work and only your own work. If you use more than five consecutive words from a single source without providing a valid reference, then that is considered plagiarism and an example of academic misconduct.
Undergraduate Academic Advisor The Undergraduate Advisor for the School of Computer Science is available in Room 5302C HP; or by email at scs.ug.advisor@cunet.carleton.ca. The undergraduate advisors can assist with information about prerequisites and preclusions, course substitutions/equivalencies, understanding your academic audit and the remaining requirements for graduation. The undergraduate advisors will also refer students to appropriate resources such as the Science Student Success Centre, Learning Support Services and Writing Tutorial Services.
Graduate Academic Advisors The Graduate Advisors for the School of Computer Science are available in Room 5302 HP; or by email at grad.scs@carleton.ca. The graduate advisors can assist with understanding your academic audit and the remaining courses required to meet graduation requirements.
Academic Accommodations. Carleton is committed to providing academic accessibility for all individuals. Please review the academic accommodation available to students here.
Student Academic Integrity Policy: Every student should be familiar with the Carleton University Student Academic Integrity policy. A student found in violation of academic integrity standards may be sanctioned with penalties which range from a reprimand to receiving a grade of F in the course, or even being suspended or expelled from the University. Examples of punishable offences include plagiarism and unauthorized collaboration. Any such reported offences will be reviewed by the office of the Dean of Science. More information on this policy may be found on the ODS Academic Integrity page.
Plagiarism: As defined by Senate, "plagiarism is presenting, whether intentional or not, the ideas, expression of ideas or work of others as one's own". Such reported offences will be reviewed by the office of the Dean of Science. More information and standard sanction guidelines can be found here.
Unauthorized Collaboration: Senate policy states that "to ensure fairness and equity in assessment of term work, students shall not co-operate or collaborate in the completion of an academic assignment, in whole or in part, when the instructor has indicated that the assignment is to be completed on an individual basis".