Course description

This course covers selected topics related to theory and practice of computer security. It is organized around 26 selected research papers. These papers, taken from the past 40 years of computer security research, reflect the instructor's personal taste and are not intended to give a comprehensive survey of modern computer security.

Schedule

Date Reading and assignments
(all dates are tentative and may change as the course progresses) 		Topic Notes
Aug 25 Attacks and defenses for the vulnerability of the decade Memory attacks [ppt]
[pdf]
Aug 30 The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone Memory attacks [ppt]
[pdf]
Sep 1 Control-flow integrity Memory protection [ppt]
[pdf]
Sep 6 Native Client Memory protection  
Sep 8 Intrusion detection via static analysis Intrusion detection [ppt]
[pdf]
Sep 13 SYN cookies Denial of service [ppt]
[pdf]
Sep 15 Inferring Internet denial-of-service activity
Outwitting the Witty worm		 Honeypots and telescopes [ppt]
[pdf]
  Project proposals due    
Sep 20 Authentication in distributed systems Trust management [ppt]
[pdf]
Sep 22 Decentralized trust management Trust management [ppt]
[pdf]
  Homework 1 due    
Sep 27 A note on the confinement problem
Certification of programs for secure information flow		 Information flow [ppt]
[pdf]
Sep 29 Ensuring operating system kernel integrity with OSck
(guest lecture by Owen Hofmann)		 OS security  
Oct 4 A decentralized model for information flow control Information flow  
Oct 6 Overshadow Virtual machines [ppt]
[pdf]
Oct 11 Overshadow (continued)    
Oct 13 New directions in cryptography Crypto protocols [ppt]
[pdf]
  Homework 2 due    
Oct 18 Cloaking malware with the Trusted Platform Module
(guest lecture by Alan Dunn)		 (Abusing) trusted hardware  
Oct 20 Building secure, efficient sandboxes with system transactions
(guest lecture by Suman Jana)		 Sandboxing  
Oct 25 Prudent engineering practice for cryptographic protocols
Breaking and fixing the Needham-Schroeder protocol using FDR		 Crypto protocols [ppt]
[pdf]
Oct 27 Midterm    
Nov 1 Intercepting mobile communications: The insecurity of 802.11 Crypto protocols [ppt]
[pdf]
Nov 3 Protocols for secure computations Crypto protocols [ppt]
[pdf]
Nov 8 Protocols for secure computations (continued)    
Nov 10 Tor Anonymity [ppt]
[pdf]
Nov 15 Differential privacy Privacy [ppt]
[pdf]
Nov 17 Privacy as contextual integrity Privacy [ppt]
[pdf]
  Homework 3 due    
Nov 22 Remote timing attacks are practical Side-channel attacks [ppt]
[pdf]
Nov 29 Keyboard acoustic emanations revisited Side-channel attacks [ppt]
[pdf]
Dec 1 Tamper resistance - a cautionary note
Cold boot attacks on encryption keys		 Physical attacks [ppt]
[pdf]
  Homework 4 due    
Dec 12 Project reports due