CPSC 689: Special Topics in

Computer and Network Security

Fall 2008

Instructor:        Dr. Guofei Gu (guofei@cs, 515A HRBB)

Lectures:         Tuesday, Thursday 5:30-6:45pm, Rm 126 HRBB

Office Hours:   Thursday 3-5pm or by appointment

Announcements

[11/10]: Initial schedule of final presentation is ready.

[10/22]: Project status report is due on Nov. 9. This is a semi-final report, including (mininum requirement) introduction/motivation, related work, proposed idea/technique sketch, current evaluation result. The final report is due on Dec. 7.

[9/12]: Project proposal is due on Oct. 9. Find your team member (or you can do individually) and prepare the project topic ASAP! In this proposal, you should also have a section of literature review (related work).

[9/12]: Homework is posted. It's due on Oct. 3 (you have about three weeks to finish the homework)

Course Description

Prerequisites: Operating Systems, Computer Networks, and C/C++ and/or Java.

This course will introduce modern topics in computer and network security. It will provide a thorough grounding in computer and network security suitable for those interested in conducting research in this area, as well as students more broadly interested in real-world security. Topics will span (but not limited to):

• Intrusion detection and prevention
• Worm: threat and defense
• Botnets: threat and defense
• Denial-of-Service: attack and defense
• Rootkit: threat and defense
• Phishing: threat and defense
• Spam: threat and defense
• Buffer overflow: attack and defense
• Software security
• DNS security
• Web security
• Virtual machines and security
• Operating system security
• Privacy and anonymity
• Forensics

Textbook (s): There is no required textbook. All reading will be from research papers in top security conferences and journals.

Three hours of lecture per week. (3 units)

Grading

Homework: 15%
Term project: 45%
Paper presentation: 20%
Paper mini-review and lecture participation:  20%

There is no mid-term or final exam.

Homework

There will be one homework. You will be asked to implement a simple, well-defined assignment individually. This homework will be assigned before mid-term.

Term Project

There will be a term project. You will do independent research in pairs or individually. You can choose any interested topic in computer/network security (not necessary a topic discussed in class, however, tied with current research is encouraged). Be ambitious and start thinking of project topics early!

Paper presentation and mini-review:

You need to write a brief mini-review/summary of each paper you read. This mini-review/summary can include:

• Problem domain: background, motivation, why this problem is important/novel/interesting
• Idea of the paper: assumption, main technique, result
• Comparison with related work
• Possible future work/direction
• Pros, cons of the paper (your conclusion)
• What can we do based on this work: lesson learned from this work? stimulate new related problem? flawed assumption/technique can be improved/extended? technique can be used to other (maybe your own dedicated) domain to solve other problem? what extension can we do for further work? ...

The mini-reviews are to be done individually and sent to me before the midnight prior to the corresponding lecture (with email subject "CPSC689-Review"). You need to read all the papers (excluding optional papers). But you don't need to review all the papers (you only need to review about 80% of all the papers, i.e., 20 papers).

For a paper presenter, you need to do more work in addition to writing mini-review:

• Read the optional paper,
• Prepare summary in slides,
• Present the summary during the first 40 minutes,
• Prepare a list of discussion questions, usually questioning the assumptions and critically evaluating the paper,
• Steer the discussion,
• Incorporate user comments into the draft summary, and
• Send the final summary to me at most within three days.

You need to be a paper presenter for only 1 time (dependent on the number of the students participating in the class).

Ethics & Academic Integrity

We will discuss threats and attacks in class. You should be fully aware of ethics when studying these techniques. If in any context you are not sure about where to draw the line, come talk to me first.

"An Aggie does not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do."

Upon accepting admission to Texas A&M University, a student immediately assumes a commitment to uphold the Honor Code, to accept responsibility for learning, and to follow the philosophy and rules of the Honor System. Students will be required to state their commitment on examinations, research papers, and other academic work. Ignorance of the rules does not exclude any member of the TAMU community from the requirements or the processes of the Honor System.

Schedule 

This tentative schedule will be updated as the course progresses. Please check back for most recent update!