Week: 1 Graded: Yes Time estimate: 60-90 minutes Tools: Browser (worksheet only, no software installation required)
Learning objective
Identify and classify confidentiality, integrity, and availability threats for a student-chosen system, and prioritize which CIA property the system's designers focused on most. (Bloom's L1: Remember -- state the CIA triad; L2: Understand -- explain why each threat maps to its CIA property.)
Setup
No software installation. You need:
- A browser to look up any reference material.
- A text editor or word processor for your written response.
- A chosen system (a web application, a smart device, a cloud storage service, a multiplayer game, a school system). Pick something you use regularly. You will return to this same system in Labs 2 and 6.
Step-by-step instructions
Step 1: Choose and describe your system (10 min)
Write one paragraph (100-150 words) describing the system you chose. Include:
- What the system does (its core function).
- Who uses it (individuals? organizations? both?).
- What data it stores or processes (the data types, not specific values: "email messages and contact lists," not actual email addresses).
- How users access it (browser, mobile app, API, physical terminal).
Step 2: Identify confidentiality threats (15 min)
Confidentiality means: information is accessible only to those authorized to see it.
Identify at least three confidentiality threats to your chosen system. For each, write:
- The threat (what information could be accessed by whom without authorization).
- How it could happen (the mechanism: credential theft, misconfigured access control, unencrypted transmission, insider threat, etc.).
- Who is harmed if it occurs (the system operator, the users, third parties, the public).
Step 3: Identify integrity threats (15 min)
Integrity means: information is modified only by those authorized to modify it.
Identify at least two integrity threats to your chosen system. For each, write:
- The threat (what data could be modified by whom without authorization).
- How it could happen (injection, unauthorized API access, tampered software update, man-in-the-middle, insider).
- Why it matters (what bad outcome follows from the integrity failure).
Step 4: Identify availability threats (15 min)
Availability means: authorized users can access the system when they need it.
Identify at least two availability threats to your chosen system. For each, write:
- The threat (how the system could be made unavailable to legitimate users).
- How it could happen (volumetric attack, resource exhaustion, dependency failure, software crash, hardware failure).
- Who is most affected when availability fails (casual users? users who depend on the service for critical functions? the operator's revenue?).
Step 5: Priority analysis (15 min)
Answer these two questions in 150-200 words total:
-
Which of the three CIA properties (confidentiality, integrity, availability) do you think the system's designers prioritized most? What evidence in the product supports your answer? (Examples: the login flow requires two factors -- designers prioritized confidentiality; the service has no offline mode and shows degraded-service banners prominently -- designers prioritized availability as a metric they monitor carefully.)
-
Which property, if violated, would cause the most harm to users? Is this the same property the designers seem to have prioritized, or a different one?
Deliverable
Submit a text file or PDF containing all five steps. Keep the document under 700 words total. Aim for precise language over length: "the session cookie is transmitted over HTTP on the login redirect, exposing it to network observers" is better than "there might be some network security issues."
Grading rubric
| Criterion | Points | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| System is clearly described with data types and access method | 10 | Vague ("I use it every day") does not score |
| Three confidentiality threats with mechanism and who is harmed | 30 | Each of the three elements must be present for each threat |
| Two integrity threats with mechanism and consequence | 20 | Must explain why the integrity failure matters, not just name it |
| Two availability threats with mechanism and affected party | 20 | Must identify who is most affected |
| Priority analysis: evidence-based, engages with both questions | 20 | "I think confidentiality" without evidence does not score; citing a specific product feature does |
| Total | 100 |
picoCTF connection
This week's picoCTF General Skills challenges ask you to use basic command-line tools, navigate a CTF environment, and find flags in plain text or encoded files. The CIA triad is implicit in CTF competition structure: the flag is confidential (only you should see it after solving), the challenge is integrity-controlled (the flag cannot be changed by players), and the server is availability-dependent (you need the server running to solve the challenge). Notice these properties as you work through the challenges.
Lab 1 of 9. Next: Lab 2 (STRIDE sketch, Week 2).