BREAK-IT: Understanding Novice Approaches to an Attack Challenge Task

Abstract

With increasing reliance on computing systems and the growing frequency of cybersecurity incidents, it is important for CS undergraduates to develop foundational security skills before entering professional roles. In particular, students should be able to recognize and reason about potential security vulnerabilities in software. However, existing approaches to integrating security into the CS curriculum often emphasize narrow areas such as secure coding or highly technical topics like cryptography or software security, rather than fostering a broader perception of security threats. In this paper, we examine how undergraduates conceptualize and identify security threats by analyzing how they attempt to find ''attacks'' in other students' code. We conducted a think-aloud study with 15 CS undergraduates at a US-based R1 institution who had no formal training in computer security. Participants analyzed peer-developed text-based video game implementations to identify potential vulnerabilities, drawing on their prior experience implementing a similar game in an earlier ''Build-It'' task. Our analysis shows that students employed systematic, hypothesis-driven strategies, including unit testing, edge-case exploration, and controlled experimentation, while also drawing on prior experiences both inside and outside the classroom. Although most students attempted to validate whether an attack was successful, several stopped after identifying a single vulnerability, leaving additional issues unexplored. Based on these findings, we offer recommendations for CS instructors and curriculum committees on integrating foundational security concepts into programming assignments to help students better recognize and reason about computer security threats.