Computer Systems Security and Information Survivability
-- An Advanced Graduate Course for UTCS

Objectives

This course is intended for graduate students who have some background in cryptography (e.g., CS378 "Cryptography") and security (e.g., Gouda's CS395T course on "Secure Network Protocols"), and wish to further study the discipline of computer security in real systems. The course objective is achieved through extensive literature study and a research project.

Course Grading

Literature research and presentation: 25%
Project: 60% (Phase I: 30%, Phase II: 30%)
Class participation: 15%
No exam

Prerequisites

Motivation in doing systems research
Background in cryptography (e.g., CS378 "Cryptography") and security (e.g., Dr. Gouda's CS395T course on "Secure Network Protocols")
Reasonable background in operating systems, networking, and distributed computing
Programming skill in C/C++, systems skill in Unix/Linux
Time and dedication

Topics

Some will be covered in the lectures, others will require literature research on your part.

Cryptography and Security: Basic Concepts

trust, secrets, keys, credential
one-way functions, pseudo-randomness, encryption, digital signatures, zero-knowledge.
Integrity, Confidentiality, and Authenticity
Trust Infrastructure and PKI

Systems Security

Secure Programming

Principle of Least Privilege
Proof-Carrying Code
Language Tools

Access Control

Capabilities and ACL

Untrustworthy and Protection

Fault Isolation
Virtualization of Execution
Secure OS

Identity and Authentication

Passwords and certificates
Biometrics

Network Security

Secure Protocols and Firewalls
Secure Routing
Secure Wireless Networks

Information Survivability

Concepts of Assurance and Survivability
Content Security

Stenography and Watermarking
Content Control and "DMCA"

Secure Hardware

Tamper Resistance
Side-Channel Attacks

Network Intrusions

Viruses and Worms
Distributed Denial of Services Attacks
Threat Modeling

Intrusion Detection and Response

Audit and Forensics
Anomaly Detection

Traceback and Active Fencing

Fault-Tolerant Networks

Projects

This course touches a large surface of different areas of computer science, and most topics are still research oriented. Although literature study is an important element of this course, it is impossible to cover every subject in details in class. Therefore, the project will give you an opportunity to explore deeply in one topic that interests you most.

The course project is organized in two phases. In phase I, you will choose a topic and do an individual project (1-person). In phase II, you will do a group project (3 or more per group). Phase II is an integration project -- you must use your phase I result and adapt it to integrate with other people's in your group. There will be opportunity after phase I for you to present your project and find other projects to integrate.

Your project can be on either synthesis or analysis side (or both). On the synthesis side, you can develop innovative security measures to protect systems and information. On the analysis side, you can analyze vulnerabilities of existing systems and demonstrate that there exist ways to exploit them.

The integration can be in the same direction -- three subsystems interacting to protect a system, or in the opposite direction -- a red-team vs blue-team scenario in which one analyzes the vulnerabilities of the other and the latter defends against the former's exploitation. A red-team vs blue-team group project can be particularly interesting if both sides keep progressing and attempting to one-up each other.