This page is organized by the weeks of the quarter in which lectures were given and papers assigned. The weeks are in inverse order, on the assumption you will most often be looking for the most recent week.
This class will be taught by Peter Reiher The textbook is Computer Security: Art and Science, by Matt Bishop. Assigned readings are from this book, unless otherwise indicated.
I will be lecturing on these subjects during the class. Since I'm choosing them as we go along, the research papers I am assigning are not listed here, but are listed below with the lecture slides.
The final exam is 8-11 on Tuesday, March 22. It will be similar in style to the midterm, but probably have one more question. Remember, reading materials, including the book, papers, and web pages, are fair game for the final. It will be open book, open notes.
Wednesday, March 16
No class today.
Monday, March 14
Textbook: Chapter 22 (Pages 613-642)
Papers:
How to Own the Internet in Your Spare Time, Stuart Staniford, Vern Paxson, Nicholas Weaver, 11th Usenix Security Symposium, August 2002.
Web links:
A Snapshot of Global Internet Worm Activity A technical report by Dug Song, Rob Malan, and Robert Stone, Nov. 13, 2001.
The Internet Worm Program: An Analysis A technical report by Eugene Spafford, 1988.
Given that time is running short, there are still a lot of important topics to cover, and I didn't even start the lecture on IPsec last week, I've decided not to actually give that lecture at all. The slides are posted, I assigned a section of the textbook that covers it, and I assigned RFCs that describe IPsec in detail. The nature of that material probably doesn't require me to speak about it. So I will be moving on directly to the lecture below on Monday. If you have questions about IPsec, you can ask me either in class or during office hours.
Wednesday, March 9
Textbook: Chapter 25 (pages 723-767)
Monday, March 7
Textbook: Chapter 26 (pages 773-799)
Here's the link to the short writeup describing what it actually means for Windows 2000 to be certified at the EAL4 level by the Common Criteria.
While I'm pointing out web links to interesting stuff related to recent lectures, here's a link to a recent report on a buffer overflow vulnerability. In this case, it's for a virus scanning product. If the security tools developers aren't going to avoid buffer overflows, there's no reason to believe anyone else will, either.
Wednesday, March 2
Textbook: Chapter 11.3-11.7, pages 283-307.
Web Links:
RFC 2401: Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol.
RFC 2402: IP Authentication Header.
RFC 2406: IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) .
Monday, February 28
Web links:
RFC 2267: Network Ingress Filtering: Defeating Denial of Service Attacks Which Employ IP Source Address Spoofing, P. Ferguson and D. Senie, January 1998. One of two RFCs that define ingress filtering. The other one defines it in the opposite manner.
SYN Cookies, D. J. Bernstein. A good explanation of the details of SYN cookies to handle TCP SYN floods.
The Naptha DoS Vulnerability,BindView Inc, 2000. A more sophisticated SYN flood that cannot be handled by SYN cookies.
Wednesday, February 23
Textbook: Chapter 18, pages 477-494.
Web links:
Exploiting Windows NT 4 Buffer Overruns, A Case Study RASMAN.EXE.
The following link is a little behind where we are in the class, but it's timely and the underlying point is worth hitting on again:
The State of Homograph Attacks, Eric Johanson, 2005. Think particularly about the issue of SSL certificates here.
Monday, February 21: No class for President's Day holiday
Wednesday, February 16
Textbook: Chapter 17, pages 439-472.
Web links:
Wright et. al., Linux Security Modules: General Security for the Linux Kernel,, 11th Usenix Security Symposium, San Francisco, CA, August 2002.
Monday, February 14
Textbook: Chapter 12 (pages 309-335).
Web links:
A short essay on the limits of using biometrics by Bruce Schneier. This essay is embedded in a longer newsletter. You need only read the section titled "Biometrics in Airports".
Tsutomu Matsumoto, Hiroyuki Matsumoto, Koji Yamada, Satoshi Hoshino, "Impact of Artificial "Gummy" Fingers on Fingerprint Systems.", Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 4677, January 2002. A reality check on the promise of a particular biometric.
The test will be open book, open notes. It will consist of essay questions requiring you to apply knowledge from the lectures or the reading materials. I have provided you copies of last year's midterm exam and the midterm from three years ago , along with a diagram from that midterm.
Monday, February 10
Textbook: Chapter 10, sections 10.3-10.9 (pages 252-272).
Wednesday, February 2
Web links:
An essay on the value of using known and proven cryptography by Bruce Schneier. It's part of a longer message. You are only required to read this essay.
Monday, January 31
Textbook: Chapter 10, sections 10.1-10.2 (pages 245-252).
Web links:
Wednesday, January 26
Web links:
A description of the Rijndael (AES) cipher.
Textbook: Chapter 9, sections 9.2.2.2-9.7 (pages 227-241).
Monday, January 24
There will be no class on Monday, January 17, due to the Martin Luther King Day holiday.
Wednesday, January 19
Wednesday, January 12
Monday, January 10
January 10, 2005
Textbook: Chapter 1 (pages 1-25)
Web links:
Improving the Security of Networked Systems, Julia Allen, Christopher Alberts, Sandi Behrens, Barbara Laswell, and William Wilson.
Why Computers Are Insecure, Bruce Schneier. (The link leads to an entire web page on various security subjects. Read it all, if you want. You are only required to read this essay, however, which is around a page and a half.)
Social Engineering Fundamentals, Part I: Hacker Tactics Sarah Granger.