Work in a group of 2-4 people.
Hand in your presentation as howitworks/howitworks.pptx if your slides are Powerpoint
or howitworks/howitworks.key if Keynote. You may, alternatively, use a web-based presentation
of some kind, in which case hand in the link via howitworks/howitworks.txt.
For this assignment, you will
- Choose a security topic that makes you say I wonder how that works?
- Enter your topic and team on this Google spreadsheet.
- Figure out how your topic works in as much detail as you can find.
- Produce a demonstration of your topic, either as a screen-capture video or
as a sequence of screenshots showing details.
- Put it together in presentation slides (Powerpoint, Keynote, Google Slides, or some other web-based system)
suitable for a 10-minute presentation
- Be prepared to do your presentation in class on Feb 23. We'll choose the presenters via
random number generator on Feb 23, so be ready then. Assuming we can't get all the presentations
in on one day, we'll finish up on Feb 26.
What to hand in
You'll hand in a set of slides by 11:59PM Thursday, Feb 22 so I can get them all on the
classroom computer before class. Hand them in via one teammate's git repository as
described above.
Additional expectations
- Structure your presentation in two parts. First, briefly explain what the topic is,
which may include a quick summary of the history of the topic (no more than 2 minutes for
this part). Second (3-4 minutes), explain in as much detail as you have time for the
mechanisms of the topic. Ideally, you want your audience to be able to understand
how the thing works (possibly a tall order for such a short presentation, but that's
what you're shooting for).
- Use a 16:9 aspect ratio for your slides.
- Your slides should be suitable for display, which means (among other things) that
the amount of text per slide should be quite small. If you have longer explanations
that you want to include verbally during your presentation (and you almost certainly will),
include prose or summaries of the longer explanation in the "Notes" section of
each slide. The Notes are also a good place to put links and other citations.
- Think about what images are relevant to your topic. An instructive image can
be a huge benefit to your audience's attention and understanding.
- Practice your presentation. If you think your presentation is going to be 10 minutes
but you don't practice it, you'll end up taking 15 or more minutes. (Trust me and my long, sad
experience of going overtime. It's astonishing how quickly 10 minutes goes by.)
Advice
- Pick a topic that you're fired up about. Curiosity is a great motivator, and
will make your presentation all the better.
- The best presentation will make the audience say both wow, that's cool!
and oh, so that's how that works!. Think hard about your demo, and
how to make the demo reveal the topic's inner workings.
- The hard part in this assignment will be cutting your exposition down to its
bare bones. If you want your friend to understand how Exploit X works, what is the
absolute minimum amount of information you need to share to get the details across?
This is hard, but it's really important to practice doing it. Don't
forget this famous quote.
- Not all topics will have demos that you will be able to perform (e.g. the setup of a suitable
sandbox system might be too big of a job).
In those cases, you'll either want to pick a different topic or figure out a way
to reveal the topic's mechanisms without a demo.
- Some topics have a big "how does that work?" component, but are just too big.
For example, knowing how Stuxnet worked
would be super-cool, but it's a huge topic. Pick something shorter. For example,
the mechanism of Shellshock
bug in bash is fascinating, but
much more limited in scope.
- Having trouble finding a topic? We'll talk in class, but don't hesitate to come
see me for a little brainstorming session.