CSC5113C does something crueler—and far more educational. It forces you to implement the protocols, then immediately break them.
My server was talking to the client. But so was something else . csc5113c
The first time you see a DNS exfiltration tunnel—where someone encoded /etc/passwd into subdomain requests—it feels like magic. By the end of the lab, you realize it’s just math. Clever, terrifying math. CSC5113C does something crueler—and far more educational
Lab 4 is the turning point. You’re given a PCAP file—a recording of a real (anonymized) corporate network breach. Your job: reconstruct the attacker’s steps using only packet analysis. No logs. No alerts. Just 30,000 packets and your sanity. But so was something else
My code was perfect. The math was solid. But my throughput looked like a flatline. After three hours of blaming the compiler, the kernel headers, and my own existence, I finally enabled promiscuous mode on the NIC. That’s when I saw it.
You learn fast. You learn that sequence numbers without crypto are just polite suggestions. You learn that "congestion" is often just malice. And you learn that tcpdump is the difference between an A and a sleepless incomplete. Ask any CSC5113C alumnus about ~/lab4/attacks/ . They’ll go quiet.