ITEC 345 2013fall ibarland

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grading-guide-key
general grading guide

Note that not everything I note is not necessarily a point-penalty (but could become one, if repeated in the future). Also, sometimes my comments might be optional suggestions; see me if I made a comment that would make your homework less clear were it followed.

Some markups/comments are just standard proofreading marks.

Grading Comment Key

Some common errors/comments, marked with greek letters (lower-case):

• σ (sigma): Be sure to be specific!
  • Poor: “Trojan horses trick innocent users, causing billions of dollars worth of harm and fraud.”
  • Better: “The trojan program Ulysses.exe, which acted like an installer, read credit-card numbers and emailed them back to the hacker.”
  • Best: “The trojan program Ulysses.exe, which purported to be an updater for Symantec AVP, would actually scan the user's hard drive for any file whose name contained “credit” or “bank”. For each such file, it would examine the contents looking for 16 digits (possibly with hyphens or spaces); if any were found then Ulysses sent e-mail to avp-installer@symantec.wv6752.com.”

  Another example, from a paper:

  One example is the interruption of routines between the user controlled application layer and the kernel. By manipulating these interrupts the user can hack into the kernel and gain unwelcome access.

  How do you “manipulate interrupts”? The words “can hack into” add zero information, and should be deleted.

• λ (lambda): Long-winded, verbose wording.
  • Poor: “What is a virus? Most could agree that they are thought of to be harmful and can cause damage. Most would even say that …”
    Deleting this entire prelude would only make the paper more concise and stronger.
  • Poor:

    INTRODUCTION: SINCE THE CREATION OF TECHNOLOGY THERE HAVE BEEN ATTACKS ON COMPUTERS AND OTHER TECHNICAL DEVICES. ALL IN ALL, SECURITY IS IMPORTANT IN AN AGE WHERE TECHNOLOGY RULES THE WORLD. VIRUSES AND WORMS CAN COME FROM ANYWHERE AND EVERYONE WHO USES TECHNOLOGY NEEDS SOME INFORMATION ON THE DIFFERENT WORMS AND VIRUSES THAT EXIST. THIS PAPER WILL CONCENTRATE ON ONE SPECIFIC ATTACK, THE STUXNET WORM.

    If nothing else, a paper about Stuxnet is not about how the general population needs information on how to protect themselves against computer viruses, so this introduction is actively working to mislead the reader as to what the paper is about.
  • Poor: “Abstract—This is a paper on the Stunex [sic] worm for my ITEC 345 class security in computing.” Rather than tell me the paper I'm reading is a paper, just start telling me the information you want to convey.
  • Poor: “Abstract--This paper is going to detail what Stuxnet is and why it is important. It is a very special kind of malware that has had a large impact on a lot of the world we currently live in. The who, what, where, why, and how about Stuxnet will be answered.”
  • Better: “This paper will discuss the Stuxnet virus: how it worked, where it was used, and who the attackers and authors were.”
  • Best: “Stuxnet was a computer virus designed by The U.S. and Israeli militaries, to attack Iranian nuclear refinement plants. It is notable as the first high-profile offensive cyber-attack initiated by the U.S. on another government.” In general, don't wait to the end of the paper to surprise people with the main idea you're trying to get across; put it up front and center.
  Other examples:
  • Slightly verbose: “In the visual representation of Fig 2, one can see the flow of requests through the kernel.”
  • Better: “Figure 2 shows the flow of requests through the kernel.”
• κ (kappa): Confusing/Unclear/unhelpful prose. Might be non-gramatical, or just might be a convoluted phrasing that should be simplified. It's something that I had to stop and go back and re-read, because I couldn't figure out what you were trying to say.
• μ (mu) Missing requirement: There is a function or method requested on the homework which you didn't provide. (And/or, you spent a lot of time writing something which was never actually asked for.) Please read the handout carefully!
• ρ (rho): Repeated statements. This sentence has large overlap with the previous sentence (or, with material in previous paragraphs, beyond just a reminder).
• ι (iota): Poor indentation or separation. Includes paragraphs that are too long, or a long stretch that would benefit from being divided into (labeled) sub-sections.

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©2013, Ian Barland, Radford University Last modified 2013.Oct.31 (Thu)

Please mail any suggestions (incl. typos, broken links) to ibarlandradford.edu