Faculty
Stuhlsatzenhaus 5
66123 Saarbrücken (Germany)
I am a tenure-track faculty at CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security. Previously, I was a Post-Doc researcher at the Chair of System Security at Ruhr-University Bochum and did my Ph.D. at the Eindhoven University of Technology. My research interests include embedded systems security, security of mission-critical real-time software, and secure space and automotive systems. I lead the Embedded Security group at CISPA, which develops and implements new methods to protect embedded systems against various classes of attacks, both on the hardware and firmware.
UNSPECIFIED
IEEE Symposium on Security and PrivacyIEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy
USENIX-Security
USENIX Security SymposiumUSENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security), 2022.
USENIX-Security
USENIX Association31st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 22)
EuroSys
EuroSys 2022EuroSys 2022
Reverse Engineering and Exploit Development for Embedded Systems
From critical infrastructure to consumer electronics, embedded systems are all around us and underpin the technological fabric of everyday life. As a result, the security of embedded systems is crucial to us.
Therefore, in this course, we will work toward understanding the fundamentals of developing software/hardware exploits against embedded systems. In this course. We will cover topics such as firmware extraction, modification, and different hardware serial protocols. We also cover topics such as exploit development for ARM-based embedded devices and write exploits for vulnerabilities such as uninitialized stack variables, off-by-one bugs, Use-after-free, and utilize techniques such as ROP, Signal-oriented programming, to attack embedded systems. We also attack micro-controllers and try to extract secrets from them by utilizing reverse-engineering techniques. Finally, we perform fuzz-testing on embedded firmware via re-hosting.
Do not register directly, before contacting us (abbasi@cispa.de). While we do not have a formal registration requirement, it is absolutely essential that you only apply for this course when you already passed the system security course, or have a very strong background in system security. There is a high probability that you fail the course if you do not have such a background. It is not worth it, do not try.
The lecture will take place in two weeks from 28 August to 1st September and 4th to 8th September. There will be lectures in the morning followed by practical exercises in the afternoon. The exam will be the week after on 13th September.
To pass the course, you must score at least 50% on the final oral exam. In the final exam, you can reach 100 points, so you need to achieve at least 50 points in the final exam to pass the course. To be admitted to the exam, you must achieve at least 50% of the points from the exercises.
You will typically have the task of exploiting a vulnerable program to extract a secret flag.
At the end of the semester, there will be an oral exam for a duration of 30 minutes. All questions of the exam are in English.
Register for the course here in the CISPA CMS pending prior communication.
Hardware Security
The seminar is structured into three parts:
You will be assigned a topic (related to your assigned paper) for which you will read and summarize the current research in a survey paper. (6 pages). The resulting survey papers will undergo a peer review process similar to academic conferences.
Each participant will read up a paper and give an overview presentation about it. Other individuals should also read the paper and prepare research questions about the paper and a one page description of the paper. Students then will discuss limitations and open issues given the previously conducted work.
Each participant will read two survey paper and write a review about it. The reviewer then decides if the paper should get accepted or rejected.
Embedded Systems Security
From critical infrastructure to consumer electronics, embedded systems are all around us and underpin the technological fabric of everyday life. As a result, the security of embedded systems is crucial to us.
For the first time, we offer a seminar on "Embedded Systems Security". This seminar covers research papers addressing various topics in embedded systems security. This includes topics such as instruction profiling (template attack), fault injection and side-channel attacks, firmware static and dynamic analysis, intrusion detection in embedded systems, automotive systems security, and fuzzing embedded systems.
The seminar is organized similarly to a scientific conference. In addition to writing a summary of a particular topic, students also learn about the peer-review process: An important aspect of the seminar is constructive feedback on other students' reports, e.g., in the form of suggestions on how to improve the writing and presentation. Students should then also use this feedback to improve their own text.
The students get to know methods in research-related teaching and are able to study a closely defined topic on their own based on scientific literature. The students learn to understand technical literature on a specific topic and obtain insights into current research topics. The students can practice writing scientific texts and the summary of complex subject areas. The students learn more about the peer-review process and scientific work in general. Furthermore, the talk enables students to learn to present scientific results and deepen the subject.
The list of topics and papers for this year's seminar can be found here.
Systems Security
In this course, important theoretical and practical aspects from the area of systems security are presented and discussed. The focus is on various aspects of software security and different attack and defense techniques are presented. More specifically, important attack methods (e.g., buffer overflows, race conditions, microarchitectural attacks, etc.) as well as defense strategies (e.g., non-executable memory, Address Space Layout Randomization, memory tagging, etc.) are discussed. Other topics of the lecture are fuzzing, obfuscation, and similar aspects of systems security.
At the end of the course, students should be able to analyze security aspects of various types of software systems, detect vulnerabilities in the design and implementation, and independently develop security mechanisms. In addition, other aspects from the area of systems security, such as privacy and anonymity, will be discussed. An important part of the course are exercises, which illustrate and deepen the material with practical examples.
At the end of the class, the students know important theoretical and practical aspects of security mechanisms of modern software systems. They are able to independently analyze the security of a given program, detect vulnerabilities in the design, and independently develop possible solutions and protective mechanisms. In addition, they have become familiar with basic terms from the field of systems security. They are able to create new security models themselves and defend them argumentatively.
There are no formal prerequisites for this course. However, if you want to participate, please take the following aspects into account:
Background in security is also an advantage (e.g., prior participation in the Foundations of Cybersecurity lecture or Security core lecture). However, we will also cover several relevant aspects as part of the lectures.
The lecture will take place every Wednesday from 12:00-14:00 o'clock, starting on October 20, 2021. The lecture will be offered in a hybrid format: we will have regular lectures in the CISPA lecture hall (0.05) and also record the lectures. The exercises will be offered via Zoom, you can find more information on the page "Access to lectures".
For passing the course, you need to obtain at least 50% of the points from the final exam. For admission to the exam, you need to obtain at least 50% of the points from the exercises (120 points). The final grade is based on your exam results only. More details can be found below:
During the semester, there will be seven assignments with a total of 240 points. You need at least 50% in total (120 points) to be admitted to the exam. The assignments cover the topics discussed in the lectures and aim to deepen your knowledge of the topics. We encourage you to solve these assignments because this helps to understand the topics covered in the lectures.
Assignments have to be submitted individually, no group work is allowed. A submission typically consists out of a theoretical and practical part. Submit solutions to all theoretical tasks (e.g., questions, charts to fill out, etc.) in a single PDF file. For all practical tasks, we have prepared a remote environment equipped with all necessary tools and materials. Practical tasks are solved and submitted directly within this environment. Check the Remote Exercise Framework (REF) PDF for more information. These practical exercises are designed like CTF challenges. You will typically be tasked to exploit a vulnerable program to extract a secret flag.
At the end of the semester, there will be a written exam. The exact date and time will be announced once the information is available. Note that physical presence is required for the exam. The exam consists of both theoretical questions and practical questions. Theoretical questions are based on the theoretic parts and concepts of the slides and possibly additional content presented in the lecture, which is not part of the slides. Practical questions are, in principle, similar to the practical assignments. However, the complexity of the questions is of course scaled to make them adequate for the time available during an exam (e.g., you are not expected to implement a longer piece of assembler code). If you have at least 50% of the points, you will pass the class.
All questions of the exam are in English. Answers can be given either in English or in German, at the student’s discretion.
No lecture notes or any other materials are allowed during the exam. All materials required to solve the practical questions are provided at the exam.