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COMP47860

Academic Year 2024/2025

Ethical Hacking (COMP47860)

Subject:
Computer Science
College:
Science
School:
Computer Science
Level:
4 (Masters)
Credits:
5
Module Coordinator:
Assoc Professor Mark Scanlon
Trimester:
Spring
Mode of Delivery:
Blended
Internship Module:
No
How will I be graded?
Letter grades

Curricular information is subject to change.

Applications continue to be leveraged as a means of attack into organisations and even individual stakeholders. As an asset to organisations it is fundamental that a mature application security program is in place to protect against threats. In this module, students will gain an deep understanding of application security from threats to the vulnerabilities that open up an application to threats, how a vulnerability can be leveraged to perform an exploit and finally countermeasures in preventing or safeguarding against threats to mitigate risk. Students will be faced with a number of real world challenges while remaining inside an ethical sphere.

About this Module

Learning Outcomes:

On completion of this module students should be able to:
1. Students should have a strong understanding of ethics, the hacker mindset and the motivation of whitehat and black hat hackers.
2. Students should have a strong understanding of the top industry threats.
3. Students should have an understanding of security assessment techniques.
4. Students should be able to demonstrate industry utilised hacking tools.
5. Students should be able to articulate risk appropriately.
6. Students should be able to demonstrate impact of vulnerabilities through POCs.
7. Students should be able to demonstrate industry best practice mitigations.

Indicative Module Content:

Introduction to Ethical Hacking
Industry Threats
Measuring Risk (Common Vulnerability Scoring System)
SQL Injection
Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Broken Authentication
Broken Authorisation
Bad Cryptography
Current Trends

Student Effort Hours:
Student Effort Type Hours
Lectures

12
Practical

24
Autonomous Student Learning

80
Total

116

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
Lectures
Practical exercises

Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 

Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade In Module Component Repeat Offered
Assignment(Including Essay): Assignment 1 Week 8 Graded No

20

 No
Assignment(Including Essay): Assignment 2 Week 12 Graded No

40

 No
Quizzes/Short Exercises: Quiz 1 Week 9 Graded No

20

 No
Quizzes/Short Exercises: Quiz 2 Week 12 Graded No

20

 No

Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 

Resit In Terminal Exam
Summer No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 

Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Not yet recorded.

Gray Hat Hacking: The Ethical Hacker's Handbook, Sixth Edition, 6th Edition
by Allen Harper, Ryan Linn, Stephen Sims, Michael Baucom, Huascar Tejeda, Daniel Fernandez, Moses Frost
Released March 2022
Publisher(s): McGraw-Hill
ISBN: 9781264268955

Name Role
Kushal Ramkumar Tutor
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