CSCI-4250/6250: Computer and Network Security  (Fall Semester, 2006)

Instructor:   Kang Li (kangli AT cs DOT uga DOT edu)
Office Hours: TBA  (office at 219A BYOD GSRC)
TA: TBA
TA Office Hours: TBA

 

Course Description

This course provides a one-semester, in-depth coverage on the topic of network and system security. It is designed to help graduate and senior undergraduate CS students understand important aspects of network and system security, and participate in research in this area.

 

This course is to provide fundamental concepts and principles of computer network and system security to students. Combined with the experiences that they obtain from the course projects, students would improve their skills of developing secured network applications and systems that detect and defend against malicious attacks.

 

Technically, the course includes basic concepts of network and system security, with an emphasis on the threats and countermeasures relevant to Internet applications. Students will be prepared to evaluate the security of real network systems, and to develop strategies to detect and defend against attacks. In additional to the traditional security technologies, this course will also include discussions on problems of current research in network and system security.

 

Prerequisites

This course requires students having an understanding of basic networking and system concepts and programming. Students are recommended to take both network class and operating system before this class. No prerequisites of experiences in security.

 

Textbook

 

·   Charlie Kaufman, Radia Perlman and Mike Speciner, Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-046019-2.

· Simson Garfinkel, Gene Spafford, Practical Unix and Internet Security, O’REILLY, ISBN 0-596-00323-4

 

Evaluation

·   Class Projects      50%

·   Participation       10%

·   Exam                40%

 

Class Schedule:

Days

Time

Building

Room

Tuesday

3:30P ~ 4:45P

Boyd GSRC

328

Wednesday

3:35P ~ 4:25P

Boyd GSRC

328

Thursday

3:30P ~ 4:45P

Boyd GSRC

328

 

Course Outline (subject to change):

Date

Topic

Readings

Assignment

Slides

Week 1

Course Overview

Security Threats

DES measurements (Due Aug 28)

 

Week 2

Host Security

Access Control, Password

Brute-force Attack (Due Sep 7) shadow file

 

Week 3

Cryptography

RSA, DES, Hashes and Message Digests

Trace Analysis (Due Sep 14) trace file

 

Week 4,5

Vulnerabilities and Attacks

Buffer Overflow, Stack Guard

IP Spoofing

 

Week 6

Network Security

IPsec, VPN

Port Scan  

 

Week 7,8

Web Security

HTTPS, SQL injection

Buffer overflow attack

 

Week 9

DoS Attack and Defense

Backscatter

 

 

Week 10

Wireless Security

WEP

 

 

Week 11, 12

Other Security Topics

 

Term Project

 

Week 13

Final Project and Exam

 

 

 

Class Projects (programming assignments)

This course will include both exams and projects. The evaluation of the student is going to emphasize more on projects and student participations.

 

Currently 7 projects are planned for this class (more projects will be added if time permits).

 

·   Host Access Control (Week 1~3)

o        DES performance measurements

o        Password cracking and protection

·   Network Anomaly Detection (Week 4~6)

o        IP spoofing

o        Port Scan

o        Trace Analysis

·   Defending Common Vulnerability (Week 7~10)

o        Local buffer overflow exploit

o        Remote buffer overflow attack and defense

 

One or two competitions are also planned as team projects during this course. Details of the team project will be discussed during the course.

·   Team Project

o        DEFCON style of competition

o        Fast IDS processing

 

Programming Assignment Turning In Procedure

TBA

Additional Requirement for Graduate Students

Graduate students that take this class as CSCI-6250 are expected to accomplish additional tasks. Graduate students are expected to either make presentations of recent research on computer security or prepare demonstrations on related projects. Please meet the instructor in the second week to discuss the topic.