Using Shared Materials

Sharing and Using Shared Materials

These functionalities are available by choosing My Deterlab and then the Sharing tab.

Any user can share materials they think would be helpful to others, and any user can find shared materials.

What can be shared 

Currently, you can share teaching materials (lectures, homeworks, teacher manuals or class capture-the-flag exercises) and research materials (experiments, tools, datasets and HOWTOs).

Any material can be shared either by uploading a ZIP file or by specifying a URL. ZIP files will be unzipped prior to moving them to our shared space.

Requirements for Sharing

A material is uniquely identified by its title, type and username of the user who shared it. Multiple users can share versions of a material with the same title and type, or a single user can share multiple materials with the same title but different types.

We assume that ZIP files are created by having a folder with materials you want to share and zipping it. This folder must have an index.html file inside, which contains at least 50 characters.

When sharing something you need to specify its type (see here), a few keywords that people can use to search for your material and an E-mail address of the person responsible for maintenance.

Material Types 

Here are some semi-formal definitions of the types of materials that can be shared.

Lectures

A lecture can be a Word document, a set of slides, or a URL to an online content. You could share a whole lecture or a set of smaller modules covering some topic.

Homework

A homework is a specification of an assignment that a student will see. Ideally it should follow the format similar to other homework assignments on site.

Teacher Manuals

A teacher manual accompanies a homework or a CCTF. Ideally it should follow the format similar to other teacher manuals on site.

CCTFs

CCTFs or Class Capture-the-Flag exercises are targeted exercises that pit two student teams against each other in attack/defense scenarios. These are ideal to assign to classes after they have completed a few homeworks with DETERLab. For more information about CCTFs see this paper. CCTFs are not currently supported on our new platform. We hope to support them starting in early 2024.

Experiments

An experiment is a set of files (e.g., topology file, input data, output data, setup scripts, etc.) that enables someone else to recreate an experiment done by a user. This definition is intentionally open-ended. Share any files you believe are useful to others that seek to repeat or build upon your work.

Datasets

A data set is a collection of data you want to share with others. Such data should be either related to your DETERLab use (e.g., it was used in an experiment by you that later produced results for a publication) or should be generated by your DETERLab experiment (e.g., traces of traffic collected in your experiment as you performed some attack).

Tools

A tool is some application that is useful for experimentation, such as a traffic generator, an attack generator, etc. Ideally you would share both the source and the binary of your tool, and some test data.

HOWTOs

A HOWTO is a small building block for an experiment. For example, it could be a recipe how to set up a DNS server, or how to perform a SYN flood attack.

Finding Materials 

You can find materials by searching for them under the Sharing tab. You can search by keyword (or leave empty to search for all materials), by type or both.

Adopting Materials 

Once you [#find find] materials you are interested in you can either download them as a ZIP file, or if you teach a class, you can adopt them directly into your class (visibility of adopted materials is set to all students). If you want to modify a material before adopting it to your class, download it as ZIP, apply changes locally and then upload it to your class.

Modifying Materials Shared by You 

If you want to modify a material you have shared previously simply re-share it using the same title and type. This will overwrite the previously-shared content.