Security Analysis of CAT-SOOP

CAT-SOOP is an educational platform used for many introductory computer science classes at MIT. The platform stores a great deal of confidential information, including homework solutions and student grades, so the integrity of several MIT courses depends on CAT-SOOP being a secure system. In this paper, we discuss CAT-SOOP’s security policy and explore a variety of attacks aimed at finding vulnerabilities in the system. We provide an analysis of the secure and insecure elements of CAT-SOOP with respect to the system’s confidentiality, integrity, and availability and provide recommendations for how CAT-SOOP can improve its security in these three areas.