Module: Introduction

This module contains background material for the course.

Lectures

Here is the introductory lecture:

• What is Computer Systems Security? (slides here)

Additionally, we created a set of lectures on fundamentals to help you approach this course! These will also be referred to in the different modules, but you might want to look through them now:

• Fundamentals: Computer Architecture (slides here)
• Fundamentals: Assembly (slides here)
• Fundamentals: Binary Files (slides here)
• Fundamentals: Linux Process Loading (slides here)
• Fundamentals: Linux Process Execution (slides here)

Practice Problems

There are no practice problems for this module!

Further Reading

• An awesome intro series that covers some of the fundamentals from LiveOverflow.
• Phineas Fisher’s writeup of the hacking team disclosure (discussed in the What is Computer Systems Security video). Originally posted on pastebin by Phineas Fisher, but since removed.
• A comprehensive assembly tutorial for several architectures (amd64 is the relevant one here).