This class teaches you how to disassemble binaries, read x86-64 assembly language, and debug black-box binaries in WinDbg and GDB. This knowledge of assembly is the fundamental skill which is required to learn reverse engineering and vulnerability exploitation. Reverse engineering is in turn a fundamental skill which is required for malware analysis and vulnerability hunting.

This class is designed to give you all the background you need to understand how x86-64 firmware (aka UEFI BIOS) works, and what the most common security misconfigurations are. It will prepare you to be able to read and understand the existing attack and defense research in the space, taking an explicit walk through of the attack and defense moves and counter-moves threat tree. And as always, this classes teaches you to be comfortable with Reading The Fun Manual (RTFM!) to go seek out the most accurate details of how things work, and to see out new problems in new areas that no one's read yet with a security mindset.

This class teaches you about the fundamental hardware mechanisms which all operating systems, virtualization systems, and firmware *must* interact with in order to run successfully on x86 hardware. For instance it teaches you what an OS, virtualization, or firmware must do to separate user code (ring 3) from kernel code (ring 0). Or how they can enforce non-executable memory to make vulnerability exploitation more difficult. This is taught in a *mostly* OS-agnostic way focusing on Intel-isms rather than OS-isms (albeit with using Windows as reinforcement, thanks to its excellent kernel-level debugging support.) This class also teaches you to be comfortable with Reading The Fun Manual (RTFM!) to give you self-sufficiency when seeking out the most accurate details of how things work.