[538P] Topic in Computer Systems: Systems Security (2022-2023)

Paper Summary (no more than 250 words)

Provide a brief summary of the paper (3-5 sentences is usually enough). The aim is to demonstrate that you’ve read (and understood) the paper, so try to paraphrase and extract the essentials. At this stage you should aim to be objective; later sections allow for your own opinion.

Answer the following (no more than 750 words in total)

The Problem

What is the problem? Why is it important? Why is previous work insufficient (or Why has the problem not been solved before, e.g. it’s a new problem the authors have identified). This is your take on what the authors say in the paper (so again should be fairly objective). If the paper doesn’t seem to tackle a particular problem, then focus on the primary motivation for the work. 1-2 sentences for each of the three questions is probably sufficient.

The Solution (or Approach)

What is their approach/solution? How does it solve the problem? How is the solution unique and/or innovative (if it is)? What are the details? Once more you should use the paper itself as the source to help you answer these questions– but, as in previous parts, please do not just copy sections from the paper. Instead, you should focus on paraphrasing/synopsizing, and extracting the essential details. Depending on the paper, you’ll probably need 5-10 sentences here.

Evaluation

How do they evaluate their solution? What questions do they set out to answer? What does the evaluation say about the strengths and weaknesses of their system? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the evaluation itself do you think? A total of 3-4 sentences should suffice here – we’re looking for highlights, not a point-by-point reproduction of the evaluation section(s). In the rare case that there is no evaluation section, skip this part of the report.

Questions for the Authors

Imagine you’re attending a talk about this paper given by one of the authors. List at least 2 questions that you would like to ask. These should ideally be specific to the paper/research.

Proposal Instuction

Your proposal should be short (~4 pages). The main objective is to assess the viability of the proposed project. You are expected to have completed a limited amount of work at this stage.

It must contain the following element:

• Problem statement (4 paragraphs): Paragraph 1) At a high level, what is the problem area you are working on, and why is it important? It is important to set the larger context here. Why is the problem of interest and importance to the larger community? Paragraph 2) What is the specific problem considered in this paper? This paragraph narrows down the topic area of the paper. In the first paragraph, you have established general context and importance. Here you describe a specific context and background. Paragraph 3) What general approach are you planning to take? Why do you expect significant results? You won’t have done the work at this stage, but you should think about the results you expect to obtain. Paragraph 4) At a high level, what are the differences between what you are doing and what others have done?
• Related Work (1 page): There are two types of related work: background work and contextual work. Background work includes contributions that are required to understand your work. They must be described in sufficient detail so that any of your classmates can understand what you are doing and why. Contextual work is necessary to help the readers place your work and identify your contributions. This includes past contributions you build upon in your own solution, work that solves the same problem but in different ways, and contributions from adjacent areas (solving a similar problem in a different domain). It is important to remember that doing something differently is not a contribution. It must be clear why you are taking an alternative approach (e.g., you exercise different trades-off, improve performance, etc.). You may have yet to perform an exhaustive literature review when submitting the proposal. Still, you need to have identified important work, know where to look for more, and clearly understand how your proposal differs from previous work. If you identify flaws in past work that you aim to address, identify and state them clearly. If you have yet to read all the papers you intend to read; you should list all those you have identified and plan to read. You should also identify areas/domains where you plan to look for relevant work. However, you should explicitly compare your proposed solution to some previous work (a few sentences per publication are enough).
• Experimental setup (1 page): What experiments will you conduct? Why? What question is each experiment designed to answer? What do you hope to learn from each experiment? What measurement tools will you use? How will you determine if your measurements are accurate? What tests will you conduct conditionally? (For example, if we learn X from experiment 1, then we must do A else do B.) What problems do you expect? This part is essential to receive meaningful feedback and plan your research. This is where most of the proposal effort should go.
• Resources Needed (<1 page): What equipment/software/tool will you need? Do you have access to it? How could you get access? You do not want to find out, midway through the project, you need access to resources that are not available.
• Schedule (<1 page): You should be as precise as you can, identify important milestones, and make sure you allocate time to write the report and incorporate peers feedback.
• Distinction from Thesis (1-2 paragraphs): You can and you are encouraged to work on a topic related to your thesis. However, your project must be distinct from your main research. You must explicit this distinction (in some cases, a single sentence is enough).

Report Instruction

You should write your final report as you would write a research paper. Your report should be at most 13 pages, including figures and tables, but excluding references. Be sure to highlight your work’s limitations honestly and discuss when your results did not meet your expectations/hypothesis. Try to explain why this happens. I expect some of the reports you submit to be suitable to be turned into conference submissions. I am more than happy to work with you to make it happen. You MUST include a link to the software artifact(s) backing your paper.

Project Presentations

Proposal Presentation

The proposal presentation should last no more than 20 minutes. You should expect questions at the end of the presentation and may allow questions during the presentation. You should clearly explain what problem you are planning to explore and why it is an important problem. You should walk your audience through your research plan and how you are planning to evaluate the outcome of your project. The presentation should be accessible to a knowledgeable but non-expert audience. The presentation is graded as a group, how you want to present is the responsibility of the group members.

Audience should read through the proposal they have been assigned to review beforehand and be ready to ask some questions. This should be non-adversarial and with the intent of helping your classmates.

Final Presentation

The final presentation should not last more than 15 minutes. You should expect 5/10 minutes of questions at the end of the presentation. You presentation must discuss the motivation behind your work, the design of your solution, the evaluation you have performed, and discuss explicitly any limitations of your work. The presentation should be accessible to a knowledgeable but non-expert audience. The presentation is graded as a group, how you want to present is the responsibility of the group members.

Audience should read through the proposal they have been assigned to review beforehand and be ready to ask some questions. This should be non-adversarial and with the intent of helping your classmates.