Exams

Final exam

August 17th, 2026

The final is comprehensive, but similar to past finals, tends to draw on bringing together concepts from throughout the course.

Changes from 2025

  • STRIDE was not covered at all (2024 covered this)
  • Threat models were covered in more depth in 2026
  • NAT was covered (missing in 2025)
  • Phishing was covered, but only half a lecture
  • Privacy did not cover GDPR, only one lecture on privacy
  • Cambridge Analytica was added as a review case (2025 only had the Verizon and Lenovo cases)
  • Spector was covered, but not Meltdown. Spector was covered in more depth than 2025.

Midterm exam

Monday 22 June, 2026 at 10am-11:15am

Past final exams

2026 is the first time a Midterm exam was used for the course, so all prior exams are Finals only.

2025

Differences between 2024 and 2025

  • STRIDE was a whole lecture in 2024, but only briefly mentioned in 2025
  • NAT was well covered in 2024, mostly removed in 2025
  • Onion Routing covered in more depth in 2025
  • New 2025 content: Metldown/Spector, Rowhammer

2024 Exam

  • 2024 Exam - Hand annotation indicates questions where the content was either not covered in 2025 or covered in less depth.
  • 2024 Exam Answers - Sample solutions. Multiple answers are possible for some of the questions, the solutions provided are only one possible answer.

Edinburgh old exam - NOT REPRESENATIVE

This exam provides some additional content which may be helpful for review. However, it was written for Edinburgh which uses a different examination structure and norms than UWaterloo. Please refer to the 2024 Exam above to get a better sense of what the exam structure will look like.