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May 30-June 2, 2017, Scholarship for Service (SFS) scholars at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) analyzed the security of a targeted aspect of the UMBC computer systems. During this hands-on study, with complete access to source code, students identified vulnerabilities, devised and implemented exploits, and suggested mitigations. As part of a pioneering program at UMBC to extend SFS scholarships to community colleges, the study helped initiate six students from two nearby community colleges, who transferred to UMBC in fall 2017 to complete their four-year degrees in computer science and information systems.The study examined the security of a set of "NetAdmin" custom scripts that enable UMBC faculty and staff to open the UMBC firewall to allow external access to machines they control for research purposes. Students discovered vulnerabilities stemming from weak architectural design, record overflow, and failure to sanitize inputs properly. For example, they implemented a record-overflow and code-injection exploit that exfiltrated the vital API key of the UMBC firewall.This report summarizes student activities and findings, and reflects on lessons learned for students, educators, and system administrators. Our students found the collaborative experience inspirational; students and educators appreciated the authentic case study; and IT administrators gained access to future employees and received free recommendations for improving the security of their systems. We hope that other universities can benefit from our motivational and educational strategy of teaming educators and system administrators to engage students in active project-based learning centering on focused questions about their university computer systems.During four summer days in 2017, cybersecurity students at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) analyzed the security of a targeted aspect of their university computer systems. We report on this novel summer research study, its technical findings, and takeaways for students, educators, and system administrators.In fall 2016, UMBC was one of ten schools that pioneered a new strategy for attracting talented cybersecurity professionals into government service: extend CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service (SFS) scholarships to nearby partnering community colleges (CCs). There are outstanding students at CCs, and for many of them the financial challenges of attending a four-year college full-time are daunting. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), UMBC offered six students the following contract: after completing an associate's degree, transfer to UMBC and complete a bachelor's degree in a cybersecurityrelated major. In return for three years of generous support (tuition, fees, health insurance, stipend, and more) starting in the last year of CC, students work for government (federal, state, local, or tribal) for each year of support. UMBC inducted three students from Montgomery College (MC) and three from Prince George's Community College (PGCC), who all ...

County (UMBC) ScholarWorks@UMBC digital repository on the Maryland Shared Open Access (MD-SOAR) platform.

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A common pattern among undergraduate computer science curriculums is to teach an introductory subject in Python followed by a more advanced software engineering subject in Java. We are building an online tool that will help students who already know Python learn the syntax and semantics of Java. Our system will differ from existing online tutors and tools for learning Java in two main aspects. First, our tutor will focus on the transition from Python to Java. Using this basis will allow us to gloss over basic concepts of programming which students are already familiar with and focus on the specifics of Java. Second, our tutor will crowdsource writing test cases for problems to the learners themselves. This will give students practice writing tests, and will also reduce the burden on instructors, who would otherwise need to implement test suites for every problem in the tutor.