Usable Security Katharina Krombholz

News

02.09.2019

Retake Exam 8th of October, 2 pm

Dear students,

The written retake exam will be on the 8th of October at 2pm in the big lecture hall. Registration will soon be possible via LSF. 

KK

19.08.2019

Vorlesungsschein/Certificate

Dear students,

If you need to collect a Schein/certificate: I deposited your certificate at the CISPA front office, you may it there during office hours. Please present your student ID.

All other marks will soon be entered in LSF. If you want to participate in... Read more

Dear students,

If you need to collect a Schein/certificate: I deposited your certificate at the CISPA front office, you may it there during office hours. Please present your student ID.

All other marks will soon be entered in LSF. If you want to participate in the re-take exam please let me know by tomorrow.

 

13.08.2019

Exam inspection

Dear students,

Today's exam inspection will take place today from 14.00-15.00 at CISPA (Seminar room 0.07)

Please let us know by next Tuesday if you want to take a retake exam.

 

07.08.2019

Final grades

Dear students,

As some of you may have noticed, we finished grading and your points and final grade are visible in CMS. Please remember the passing requirements. You may inspect the exam on Tuesday, 13th of August at 14.00 (location will be announced on Tuesday,... Read more

Dear students,

As some of you may have noticed, we finished grading and your points and final grade are visible in CMS. Please remember the passing requirements. You may inspect the exam on Tuesday, 13th of August at 14.00 (location will be announced on Tuesday, likely one of the seminar rooms at CISPA). Please let me know if you want to take the retake exam.

----------- GRADING -----------

Your overall grade will consist of

  • 3 exercises (50%),
  • a written exam at the end of the semester (50%),
  • and 3 mini-assignments to collect 6 extra points.

Minimum requirements to pass:

  1. You need to receive half of the available exercise points in order to be admitted to the written exam
  2. You need to receive half of the available exam points

Extra-Points can be used to:

  • get admitted to the written exam if you just missed the required points
  • pass the written exam if you just missed the required points
  • jump grades (e.g. from 2.3 to 2.0) 
  •  
30.07.2019

Exam corrections and final grades

Dear students,

We expect to finish exam corrections and issue final grades roughly by next Tuesday. All your exams deserve to be graded carefully which obviously takes time, especially for the open text questions and scenarios. Please be patient - tutors were... Read more

Dear students,

We expect to finish exam corrections and issue final grades roughly by next Tuesday. All your exams deserve to be graded carefully which obviously takes time, especially for the open text questions and scenarios. Please be patient - tutors were sick last week and I was travelling to a conference. We are doing our best to grade your exams as careful and quick as possible.

22.07.2019

Tomorrow's exam

Dear students,

Tomorrow's exam will take place at the CISPA lecture hall (where the lecture also took place) and start at 14.15 sharp. Therefore, we kindly ask you to come at 14.00 in order to arrange seating and distribute the exam sheets.

Please note that no... Read more

Dear students,

Tomorrow's exam will take place at the CISPA lecture hall (where the lecture also took place) and start at 14.15 sharp. Therefore, we kindly ask you to come at 14.00 in order to arrange seating and distribute the exam sheets.

Please note that no materials (slides, hand-written notes, books, calculators) are allowed during the exam.

16.07.2019

Today's lecture and exam preparation

Dear students,

Today will be the last lecture of this semester. In the first part of the lecture, Matthias will talk about usable privacy and then we will briefly revise the course content to prepare for next week's exam. You will again have the chance to ask... Read more

Dear students,

Today will be the last lecture of this semester. In the first part of the lecture, Matthias will talk about usable privacy and then we will briefly revise the course content to prepare for next week's exam. You will again have the chance to ask questions on the course content.

CISPA is currently shooting an image film and our lecture will be part o this film. Therefore, a camera team will join us during the Q&A session to record a few minutes of our lecture. If possible, please stay with us for the video shoot (the larger the crowd, the better). If you do not want to be filmed, that's fine too. Just let us know and we will either assign you a seat where you are not visible or you may leave the course earlier. If you have any questions or do not feel comfortable during the lecture or video shoot, just let us know!

Thank you very much for your cooperation for the video shoot. And again, thank you so much for being such a great audience during the entire semester.

 

03.07.2019

Last lecture of this semester

Dear students,

Due to construction works at the CISPA building, there will be no lecture next week (9th of July). The last lecture of this semester on privacy will then be on the 16th of July. At the end of this lecture you will also have the opportunity to ask... Read more

Dear students,

Due to construction works at the CISPA building, there will be no lecture next week (9th of July). The last lecture of this semester on privacy will then be on the 16th of July. At the end of this lecture you will also have the opportunity to ask questions about the exam.

Thank you so much for all the engagement and discussions during the lectures!

02.07.2019

Mini-assignment 3 published

Dear participants,

Mini-Assignment 3 - Key Verification has just been published. You can find it at the end of today's slide set (8 Encryption). Please submit your solutions until 16th of July via CMS. If you rely on the points and want to know by 9th of July... Read more

Dear participants,

Mini-Assignment 3 - Key Verification has just been published. You can find it at the end of today's slide set (8 Encryption). Please submit your solutions until 16th of July via CMS. If you rely on the points and want to know by 9th of July whether you are admitted to the exam, we recommend you to submit by 8th of July. In any case you can use these points to compensate missing point from the exam or other assignments.

Have fun explaining key verification to a person who is not a computer scientist :)

 

27.05.2019

Tomorrow's Lecture

Dear students,

As the last lectures were quite long and dense, we will not have a regular lecture tomorrow, but a short (max. 45 min) QA session instead. In the course of tomorrow's session, you may ask any question on the content that you have heard in this... Read more

Dear students,

As the last lectures were quite long and dense, we will not have a regular lecture tomorrow, but a short (max. 45 min) QA session instead. In the course of tomorrow's session, you may ask any question on the content that you have heard in this lecture and the assignments. We will also use the session to present the third assignment.

 

22.05.2019

Clarifications on the Coding Process in Assignment 2

Dear students, we are sorry, there was a typo in Section 5 of Assignment two.

"Forward your coded transcribed interview and your codebook to one of your fellow students. You should get their interview and codebook in return. Do not share your coded data with them... Read more

Dear students, we are sorry, there was a typo in Section 5 of Assignment two.

"Forward your coded transcribed interview and your codebook to one of your fellow students. You should get their interview and codebook in return. Do not share your coded data with them as two coders should code the data independent from each other! Code your partner’s interview using their codebook and send it back to them. Try to do this step quickly, since your partner cannot continue their work until you are done."

We have uploaded an updated version to CMS.

If you have already shared your coded interview with your interview partner, please send them your data without the codes you assigned. In real life, it would be suboptimal if your partner has already seen your coded data (as coders would not independent). For this assignment, this is not a problem as the learning experience is what counts!

 

 

 

20.05.2019

Clarifications on the Interviews in Assignment 2

Dear students,

since a few students have contacted us and said that their interview was 5 minutes or shorter we had an internal discussion about the importance of the length of the interview.

We came to the conclusion to set a minimum length of 8 minutes. If... Read more

Dear students,

since a few students have contacted us and said that their interview was 5 minutes or shorter we had an internal discussion about the importance of the length of the interview.

We came to the conclusion to set a minimum length of 8 minutes. If your interview is too short, please either ask more questions or interview a second person.

Be advised that one of the learning goals of this exercise is to find out what kind of questions elicit which kind of responses. If you discover that some of your questions are hard to understand or lead to very short answers you can and should change them.

 

Kind Regards,

Matthias Fassl

 

14.05.2019

Assignment 2 published and other announcements!

Dear students,

Just a quick reminder: *today* is the deadline to submit the first assignment.

We have also published the second assignment. The deadline for submission via CMS is June 4th 23:59.

Should you have any questions, please contact Matthias Fassl ... Read more

Dear students,

Just a quick reminder: *today* is the deadline to submit the first assignment.

We have also published the second assignment. The deadline for submission via CMS is June 4th 23:59.

Should you have any questions, please contact Matthias Fassl fassl@cispa.saarland. If you have trouble to find another student as a second independent coder for your interview data, please contact us and we will try our best to match you with another student.

Please also remember to check the tentative lecture schedule. There will be no lecture next week. 

To those of you who regularly attend the lecture: thank you very much for the lively interactions and the fruitful discussions!

Katharina Krombholz

25.04.2019

Assignment 1 Published

Dear Participants!

Thank you for your patience. We have published the first assignment sheet on CMS:
https://cms.cispa.saarland/usec_ss19/dl/7/Assignment_1.pdf

Please submit your essay as a PDF until May 14th 23:59 via CMS.

Should you have any questions, I... Read more

Dear Participants!

Thank you for your patience. We have published the first assignment sheet on CMS:
https://cms.cispa.saarland/usec_ss19/dl/7/Assignment_1.pdf

Please submit your essay as a PDF until May 14th 23:59 via CMS.

Should you have any questions, I am available via email fassl@cispa.saarland.

Kind Regards,
Matthias Fassl

Show all
 

[Advanced Lecture] Usable Security

The lecture will take place every Tuesday from 14.00-16.00, starting April 9th. Location: CISPA Lecture Hall

Prerequisites: CySec1/CySec2 or Security, basic knowledge in statistics

Max. number of participants: 50

This lecture is an advanced lecture in Usable Security. In this lecture, you will learn about the research methods used to study human-centric aspects of IT security. You will also learn about hot topics in usable security. Ideally, you have already completed CySec1/CySec2 or Security before taking this advanced lecture. Basic knowledge in statistics will be expected. 

If you have not yet completed any security courses BUT have a strong background in human-computer interaction, psychology, or design you are still welcome to attend this interdisciplinary lecture. In that case, please contact us to directly to discuss whether this is the right course for you.

If you have completed the seminar on Usable Security in WS 18/19 you are still welcome attend this advanced lecture. Some of the content might already be familiar, but you especially the methodology part will go more in-depth.

Exams 

  • Main exam: July 23rd
  • Backup exam: TBA

Exercises 

There will be three different exercise sheets during the semester. You will have three weeks to work on each of them.

  1. Essay including literature research (Announced: on April 25th, Submission: May 14th)
  2. Qualitative research methods (Announced: on May 14th, Submission: June 4th)
  3. Quantitative research methods (Announced: on June 4th, Submission: June 25th)

You will be notified if you are admitted to the written exam on July 9th.

Collaboration

You are encouraged to discuss exercise sheets and ask us and other students for help if necessary. However, do not actually show your resulting work to each other if we did not explicitly tell you to do that.

Grading

Your overall grade will consist of

  • 3 exercises (50%),
  • a written exam at the end of the semester (50%),
  • and 3 mini-assignments to collect 6 extra points.

Minimum requirements to pass:

  1. You need to receive half of the available exercise points in order to be admitted to the written exam
  2. You need to receive half of the available exam points

Extra-Points can be used to:

  • get admitted to the written exam if you just missed the required points
  • pass the written exam if you just missed the required points
  • jump grades (e.g. from 2.3 to 2.0) 

Timetable & Topics

Please note that this a tentative timetable. Changes will be announced as news posts.

Date Topic
9.4 Introduction and Organizational Aspects
16.4 User Study Design and Ethics
23.4 Qualitative Methods
7.5 Quantitative Methods & Statistics
14.5 Quantitative Methods & Statistics
28.5 Mid-semester Q&A
11.6 Measuring Humans, Bias
18.6 Design Methods
25.6 Authentication
2.7 Encryption
16.7 Privacy, Final Q&A
23.7 Written Exam

 



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