Assignment 1: what it tests
A revision map for Assignment 1: the administrative facts and which lecture topics each question draws on. No answers, no methods.
- Know the weighting, dates and submission format for Assignment 1.
- Find the topic pages that cover the material each question is drawn from.
5 min readJump to the quiz ↓
Use this map to find the lecture topics each question tests. It does not work through the assignment.
Assignment 1 contributes 10% and requires two submissions
Assignment 1 is worth 10% of the final course mark and covers Weeks 1–3.
Dates:
- Due: Week 5, Sunday
6 September 2026, 11:59pm - Informal extension: up to 5 days late with no penalty and no request
needed, until Friday
11 September 2026, 23:59 - Answer release:
14 September 2026, 00:00. Any submission after that receives zero marks regardless of special consideration.
Submission: two separate Canvas links, a typeset PDF report (handwritten answers score zero) and a ZIP of your code. The report must include instructions for running the code, and must not repeat the question text.
Each question draws on the linked lecture topics
Q1a: Definitions (5 marks)
What this question tests: Week 1–2, fundamental definitions and distinctions in security engineering.
Revise: What security engineering is.
Q1b: Conceptual framework (10 marks)
What this question tests: Week 1–2, conceptual framework components (assets, threats, vulnerabilities, countermeasures).
Revise: Policy, mechanism, assurance, incentives.
Q1c: Security goals (10 marks)
What this question tests: Week 2–3, security goals and threat identification in real-world incidents.
Revise: Security goals.
Q2: Social engineering in practice (25 marks)
What this question tests: Week 1–3, social engineering reconnaissance, password guessing, and cryptographic hashing (MD5).
Revise: Password usability and outdated advice and Password strength and generation.
Q3a: Access control basics (7 marks)
What this question tests: Week 3, access control models (the DAC vs MAC spectrum).
Revise: Discretionary and mandatory access control.
Q3b: Security policy models (18 marks)
What this question tests: Week 3, the Bell-LaPadula model and the Biba model, and clearance-level deduction from simulator output.
Revise: Bell-LaPadula, Biba and MLS.
Q4: Linux access control (25 marks)
What this question tests: Week 3, Linux users, groups and sudo, file
permissions, directory permissions and the sticky bit.
Revise: Unix and Linux permissions.
Pitfall
This site does not answer assessed work. Nothing on this page, or anywhere else on this site, walks through a method, a command, or a worked example for any part of Assignment 1. Work from the topic pages linked above and from the lecture material itself.
Source
Administrivia PDF