CS 458/658 S21 Blog Task

Grade distribution:

  1. Individual blog post: 56 points (70%) worth 3.5 marks of the total grade. Your blog post will be graded on its content and presentation as well as whether you attempted to initiate and engage in a discussion.
  2. Comments on others' posts: 24 points (30%) worth 1.5 marks of the total grade. 6 marks per comment and best of 4 comments per week (see step 4 below). Your comments should potentially lead to further conversation.
Rubric: This rubric will show you what we are looking for in terms of the blog post's content, presentation, discussion and the quality of the comments (here 16 points = 1 mark). A sample post will be available on Learn.

Blog task description and rules:

  1. Sign up for a timeslot with the scheduling system by the deadline on Learn. If you do not sign up by this deadline, you will be unable to earn the blog task marks associated with your individual blog post. No late blog posts will be accepted. The 48-hour grace period for assignments does not apply to the blog post or comments. Choose four weeks to go through the blog post (for step 4) to write a comment in each of these weeks on your peers' posts. Note that a week here begins on Mondays at 00:00 and ends on Sundays at 23:59.
  2. During your chosen time slot, write and publish a blog post about an issue from the last 4 months that is related to computer security or privacy. Please go through the rubric and sample mentioned above.
    1. Your post should be about a specific security or privacy incident and not about a security or privacy-related topic in general. For example, a break-in into a Bitcoin exchange would be a valid topic but a discussion of Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general would not.
    2. Topics are first come, first served. It is your responsibility to ensure that you do not post on a topic that has already been posted before (even if just 5 minutes ago). If someone posts on the same topic, even five minutes before you, you will have to submit a different blog post.

      Reserving a topic: To prevent running the risk of having someone else publish the same blog post before you, you can reserve a topic for 24 hours. To reserve a topic, make a blog post whose title includes "RESERVATION: " and a brief description of the incident. Give a link to the incident in the blog post. You must make your actual blog post in a separate blog post within 24 hours of your reservation. After 24 hours, your reservation expires and somebody else can reserve the topic. You cannot renew your expired reservation.

      Post and comment timing: Comments and blog posts that are not made in the weeklong time frame (see step 1 above) will not be marked for that week. This includes any blog posts or comments made even a minute after the deadline as those comments will be considered as being in the week after. Complete the blog posts and comments in advance of the deadline.

    3. The rubric above details what we expect the introduction, middle and conclusion of the blog post to be like. Your post (and comments to others' posts) should answer questions about the topic, such as:
      • Why is it important?
      • Who is affected and in what ways?
      • What were the causes?
      • How might similar problems be prevented in the future?
      • If such a problem happened, how can we mitigate it, i.e. reduce its impact?
    4. References to any sources you used must be provided, as per the citation criteria in the rubric. Do not plagiarize your blog post content:
      • You may not copy text verbatim from your sources.
      • Academic integrity rules apply to blog posts and comments that you make.
  3. Reply to comments made by other students on your blog post. (Go through the rubric and the list above while you are making your comment.)
  4. Other than the week in which you publish a blog post, make at least four comments on four different peers' blog posts in four different weeks. Only comments made on posts for the current week will count; comments on old posts will not be graded. (So, you cannot make a comment in week T on a post published in week T-n.) For example, you can make a comment on different posts in week 1, 3, 4, and 7, but not all four (even if on different posts) in week 7. For information on what counts as a "week", see step 1 above.

    Comment grading: The points for the best of four comments, across different blog posts, will be summed up to form your comment marks. If you make multiple followup posts to the same blog, the best comment will count towards one of the four comments above.

If you have questions about the blog task, please post them to Piazza, visible only to instructors if necessary.

Suggested sources:

Note that not all items in the above sources are related to computer security or privacy; you are responsible for selecting an appropriate topic. You are also welcome to consider other sources of information.