Binary Reverse Engineering for All

Abstract

We report our experience with a novel course on binary reverse engineering, a university computer science course that was offered at the second-year level to both computer science majors as well as non-majors, with minimal prerequisites. While reverse engineering has known, important uses in computer security, this was pointedly not framed as a security course, because reverse engineering is a skill that has uses outside computer science and can be taught to a more diverse audience. The original course design intended students to perform hands-on exercises during an in-person class; we describe the systems we developed to support that, along with other online systems we used, which allowed a relatively easy pivot to online learning and back as necessitated by the pandemic. Importantly, we detail our application of "ungrading"within the course, an assessment philosophy that has gained some traction primarily in non-STEM disciplines but has seen little to no discussion in the context of computer science education. The combination of pedagogical methods we present has potential uses in other courses beyond reverse engineering.