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Seminar Registration in LSFWritten on 31.10.25 by Jan Reineke You should have all received invitations to Overleaf projects that contain templates for the seminar report and also for the one-page summaries. You should have all received invitations to Overleaf projects that contain templates for the seminar report and also for the one-page summaries. |
Paper AssignmentWritten on 27.10.25 (last change on 28.10.25) by Jan Reineke Dear participants, We have distributed the papers, you can find the assignment and your advisor in the materials section. Please note, that the corresponding session might have shifted since one paper has been removed. You find the dates for the respective session in the calendar. We will… Read more Dear participants, We have distributed the papers, you can find the assignment and your advisor in the materials section. Please note, that the corresponding session might have shifted since one paper has been removed. You find the dates for the respective session in the calendar. We will shortly share an Overleaf project with you, which contains a template for the one-page summaries and the final report. Please write those documents directly in Overleaf and upload the PDF to the CMS for submission. The one-page summaries are due on the night before the session. Please send the rough draft to your advisor by mail 24 days before your talk (Sunday end-of-day). You may submit your draft sooner to get feedback earlier (especially over the Christmas break). Your final draft should be uploaded to the CMS one week in advance. Please coordinate with your advisor to gather feedback and improve on your draft and the slides. You can find a guideline for designing your talk in the materials section. If you have any questions, please contact your advisor directly. Don't forget to register for the course in the LSF within three weeks of this message, i.e., by November 17! |
Enter Paper PreferencesWritten on 24.10.25 by Jan Reineke Please enter your paper preferences under the following links until Sunday, October 26, 23:59 so that we can distribute the papers on Monday: - Hardware-Software Contracts: https://forms.gle/CAbydKFMjvv4dYE59 |
Security at the Hardware-Software Interface:
Information-Flow Tracking and Hardware-Software Contracts
Description
Spectre, Meltdown, and other microarchitectural attacks have been in the limelight in recent years. These attacks exploit subtle timing and behavioral differences of processors that are caused by microarchitectural optimizations such as caches and speculative execution to gain access to secret information.
How can we build systems that do not suffer from such vulnerabilities? Different communities have contributed related but distinct approaches to this question. In this course we will study work from two communities:
- Hardware information-flow tracking (IFT) determines how information propagates through hardware. It can be used to analyze a microarchitecture's information flows both dynamically and statically. We will study recent advances that make IFT applicable to modern processors.
- Hardware-software contracts capture potential information leakage due to microarchitectural side channels at the software level, enabling secure programming, e.g. of cryptographic algorithms, in a rigorous manner. We will study recent work to test and verify hardware-software contracts.
Each participant will give a presentation of an assigned paper, followed by a group discussion. All students are expected to read each paper carefully and to actively participate in the discussions. Each student will write a summary of the paper they have presented, including a general overview of the topic and reflecting the group discussion.
This is a combined proseminar and seminar with a total of 12 seats.
Requirements
Basic knowledge of computer architecture (e.g. due to System Architecture) is required.
Knowledge of security and formal methods is a plus, but not required.
Format
- Each student is assigned one of the two groups of papers:
- each student is designated as the presenter of one of the papers from his/her group (the presentation should be about 25 minutes long)
- each student needs to read all papers from his/her group and submit a one-page summary + 3 questions about each paper (excluding the paper he/she is presenting)
- The presenter of paper needs to deliver a talk draft to his/her advisor at least 24 days (hard deadline) prior to his/her scheduled talk. In the week before the talk, the presenter should also deliver the full set of slides to his/her advisor.
- Summaries+questions have to be delivered 24 hours prior to the respective session.
- For the seminar students (and thus not the proseminar students), a seminar report (should summarize the paper and discuss it in the context of the other work studied in the seminar) is required in addition, to be delivered at the end of the term, 24.3.2026).
Grading Scheme
| Seminar | Proseminar | ||||
| Presentation | Rough presentation draft | 35% | 7% | 50% | 10% |
| Full set of slides | 7% | 10% | |||
| Actual presentation of paper | 21% | 30% | |||
| Summaries of other papers + questions | 20% | 30% | |||
| Participation during sessions | 15% | 20% | |||
| Seminar Report (Seminar students only) | 30% | ||||
Calendar
Six sessions of 1h30 each are planned:
- 1st session: Wednesday, 10.12.2025, 10-12
- 2nd session: Wednesday, 17.12.2025, 10-12
- 3rd session: Wednesday, 7.01.2026, 10-12
- 4th session: Wednesday, 14.01.2026, 10-12
- 5th session: Wednesday, 21.01.2026, 10-12
- Seminar report delivery (only for Seminar students): 24.03.2026