The goal of the 10KStudents challenge is to improve cyber security by teaching 10,000 university students the basic concepts of software vulnerabilities and secure programming. It has its roots in the (now completed) SysSec Network of Excellence of which Prof. Langweg was an associate member. The challenge will teach students that security is inherent to all steps of building an IT system – not a property that can be added in the last step of the development cycle.
The challenge consists of three parts/lectures of increasing difficulty, all centered around the notorious buffer overflow bug:
- Part I – Basic Buffer Overflows (Everyone)
- Part II – Real Buffer Overflows (Computer Scientists)
- Part III – Countermeasures (Students in Security courses)
Prof. Langweg registered with his software security class to participate in this effort, and used the teaching material on buffer overflows to replace older material he had previously used for that class.