Overview

The aim of this unit is to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of software and system-level security, focusing on identifying, analysing, and mitigating software vulnerabilities. Through hands-on experience in static and dynamic analysis, reverse engineering, fuzzing, and exploitation techniques, students will learn how to uncover and defend against real-world security threats in user applications and operating systems, including kernel-level vulnerabilities.

Requisites

Prerequisites

COS60004 Creating Web Applications 
OR
COS60018 Programming Principles and Practices

Teaching periods
Location
Start and end dates
Last self-enrolment date
Census date
Last withdraw without fail date
Results released date
Semester 2
Location
Hawthorn
Start and end dates
03-August-2026
01-November-2026
Last self-enrolment date
16-August-2026
Census date
01-September-2026
Last withdraw without fail date
22-September-2026
Results released date
08-December-2026

Learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

  • Explain the architecture and operation of modern operating systems, focusing on user–kernel mode transitions, memory management strategies, and process control mechanisms.
  • Elucidate prevalent software security vulnerabilities and perform a systematic analysis of their exploitation vectors, attack surfaces, and propagation pathways within modern execution environments.
  • Conduct in-depth analysis and empirical demonstration of real-world software and system vulnerabilities that facilitate privilege escalation, unauthorized access control bypass, and arbitrary code execution through exploit chaining.
  • Design and implement defensive frameworks and operational mechanisms that harden operating systems against a broad spectrum of real-world attack vectors, including privilege exploitation, kernel-level compromise, and advanced persistent threats.
  • Analyze and articulate system-level communication paradigms, memory management architectures, and dynamic linking mechanisms, with emphasis on their security ramifications for software integrity, isolation, and resilient execution.

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Type Hours per week Number of weeks Total (number of hours)
On-campus
Lecture		 2.00  12 weeks  24
On-campus
Class		 2.00 12 weeks 24
Unspecified Activities
Independent Learning		 8.50  12 weeks  102
TOTAL     150

Assessment

Type Task Weighting ULO's
Project and Presentation Individual /Group 40 - 50%  1,4,5
Online Quizzes Individual  10 - 30%  1,2,3,4,5
Report and Presentation Individual/Group 40 - 50% 2,3,5

Content

  • Basics of software and system security
  • Common software bugs and how attackers exploit them
  • How operating systems manage memory and processes
  • Tools for finding bugs in software automatically (static analysis)
  • Tools for testing software by running it in different ways (dynamic analysis and fuzzing)
  • Techniques for combining different bug-finding tools (hybrid analysis)
  • Understanding how software is built and runs (binaries, linking, loading)
  • How attackers break software using stack and heap attacks
  • How attackers exploit other software bugs (like type confusion or race conditions)
  • Security issues in the operating system kernel
  • Hands-on experience with security tools and real-world examples
  • Assignments focused on bug finding and writing simple exploits

Study resources

Reading materials

A list of reading materials and/or required textbooks will be available in the Unit Outline on Canvas.