CS 254 - Reading List

Readings

Paper Response Guidelines

Write a ~400 word critical response and comments to each required paper. Focus on the following:

State the problem that they try to solve and the main contributions (be brief).
High-level discussion points: What are things that you like and dislike about the paper? Why is this a good or bad paper (yes it is completely okay to say it is bad as long as you provide evidence to support your claim. We strongly encourage you to be critical!)? What assumptions (explicit and implicit) are made and are they valid? How do you think the authors come up with the idea (is there a single key observation that led to the whole paper)? How you might do it differently? Any other suggestions to improve the paper? What principles can you extract from the paper? From the insights described in the paper, how you might apply it to solve other problems?
* For attack/vulnerability analysis papers: Why does an identified vulnerability exist (any implicit assumptions)? Can you imagine or come up with other attack scenarios exploiting the same underlying vulnerability? How do you think the authors discover the vulnerability (what prompted them)? Why were the networks/protocols designed this way (any alternatives)?
* For defense papers: Why is a defense successful (what are some metrics to quantify the success)? Any serious limitations? Do you think the defense will be deployed in practice? What are the hurdles that may prevent it from being deployed? What assumptions or necessary conditions (in the attack being addressed by the paper) are broken by the defense?
* For measurement papers: What are the key observations? How are the data collected (are they representative / biased)? Can you replicate the measurement? Are the conclusions convincing? Any alternative explanations of the results?

The more you write about B and C, the better. Your most important task is to demonstrate that you've read the paper and thought carefully about the topic. Feel free to give other original/creative thoughts that are not listed above (and do some research if possible to check their feasibility). No copy and paste of the original paper text --- if detected, lowest possible score will be given automatically!

Paper responses are due before each class (submit on ilearn). A response for each paper will be graded and returned back with a check-, check, or check+.

Be prepared to discuss in the lecture with your notes about what you find interesting and want to know more about (they can be questions, critics, etc.).

Use of AI (e.g., ChatGPT) is highly discouraged. It is okay to use it to help you paraphrase you wording, but the opinions and observations should come from you!

Discussion Lead and Extra Points

Please take a look at the papers in each session. If you are interested in leading the discussion of any session, you should sign up on the web sheet published through ilearn and get extra points for doing so. As a discussion lead, two tasks are expected: 1) You will summarize the papers in class (with or without slides) for 10-min each. 2) You should prepare yourself by reading the technical details carefully and coming up with a list of discussion points. The discussion points should be designed to engage students in critical and creative thinking. Think about the points ahead of time and be prepared to answer questions other students may throw at you. Email ahead of time your discussion points to instructor for feedback. Please allow 2 days to receive the feedback. This will be a good opportunity for you to learn to discuss ideas around a research topic and it generally helps your presentation and communication skills.

Reading List

Most papers should be publicly accessible. If any links are broken, please search for them. If any of them require paid subscription, you can access them for free when connecting on campus. For off-campus access, try UCR VPN.