CS 6973, Principles of Information Security (Graduates, Fall 2004)

What's New (last updated 10/21)?

• Second and Third take-home-exams are up.
• First take-home-exam is up.
• One more office hour available.
• I can sponsor some students for doing research. If you are motivated and would like to challenge yourself in conducting significant research, please come to talk to me.
• How to write a proposal? It should be no-more-than-2-page and may include:
  • Background (of the topic you plan to work on)
  • State of the art (i.e., what have been done)
  • The problem (you want to solve)
  • Expected contributions
• Policy for the take-home exams: You are NOT allowed to work on them with anyone else; you are supposed to work on your own. This fact MUST be reflected by signing "I hereby certify that I worked independently."  

Instructor

Shouhuai Xu

Office

Science Building 4.01.46

Office hour

Wednesday and Friday, 2:30-3:30 PM

When & Where

Tuesday and Thursday, 5:30 -- 6:45 PM; HSS 3.02.24

Course objectives

• This is an introductory course on the principles of information security with an emphasis on security models, architectures, and mechanisms. We will also cover some selected advanced topics.

Grading policy

• Take-home exam                               30%
• Project Proposal & Presentation       10%
• Project                                               40%
• Project Final Presentation                 10%
• Class participation                            10%

How the Project Works?

• Find a research topic (e.g., one from the selected advanced topics that will be covered in the course) that you are very interested in, and would like to conduct an extensive investigation
• Suggested projects fall into three categories (theory-oriented; system-oriented; survey after reading most of the papers in the related area -- the concrete number could be large); if you have something in mind but you are not sure if it quite fits the three categories, please talk to the instructor
• You can form a team of size <3 (in the case you need at least 3, you need to convince the instructor that it is indeed necessary)
• In general, the instructor is more than happy to help you find a topic, get the references, meet the technical challenges in the course of finishing the project

Textbook

• There is no single textbook for this course. 

Some Nice Books

• M. Bishop's Computer Security: Art and Science
• Ross Anderson's Secure Engineering

Some Other Useful Stuff

• ePrint of International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR)
• S. Goldwasser and M. Bellare's Lecture Notes on Cryptography
• O. Goldreich's Foundations of Cryptography
• W. Mao's Modern Cryptography: Theory and Practice
• B. Schenier's Applied Cryptography
• B. Preneel and V. Rijmen eds., State of the art in applied cryptography
• D. Stinson's Cryptography Theory and Practice
• V. Shoup's A Computational Introduction to Number Theory and Algebra
• M. Bellare and P. Rogaway's Introduction ot Modern Cryptography

Course schedule (tentative, subject to change)

 

Week	Date	Lecture
1
	Aug. 26	Survey
2	Aug. 31	Basic Tools: Symmetric Key Encryption
	Sept. 2	Basic Tools: Message Authentication + Hash Functions
3	Sept. 7	Basic Tools: Public Key Encryption
	Sept. 9	Basic Tools: Digital Signatures
4	Sept. 14	Design Principles I
	Sept. 16	Design Principles II: OM-AM
5	Sept. 21	Selected Topics: Secure Knowledge Management
	Sept. 23	No Class (Take Home Exam I) Write a no-more-than-500-word technical review on this paper
6	Sept. 28	Models: Access Control I (Take Home Exam I Due)
	Sept. 30	Models: Access Control II
7	Oct. 5	Models: Access Control III
	Oct. 7	Project Proposal Due + Project Proposal Presentation
8	Oct. 12	Architectures: Kerberos
	Oct. 14	Architectures: PKI
9	Oct. 19	Architectures: SSL
	Oct. 21	Selected Topics: Secret Handshake
10	Oct. 26	No Class (Take Home Exam II) Write a no-more-than-500-word technical review on this paper.  You should work independently and certify this by signing that "I hereby certify that I worked on this review independently".
	Oct. 28	No Class (Take Home Exam III) Write a no-more-than-500-word technical review on this paper.  You should work independently and certify this by signing that "I hereby certify that I worked on this review independently".
11	Nov. 2	Architectures: IPSEC (Take Home Exam II + III Due)
	Nov. 2	Selected Topics: Why Internet Isn't Secure?
12	Nov. 9	Selected Topics: Computer Security in the Real-World
	Nov. 11	Selected Topics: Electronic Voting
13	Nov. 16	Selected Topics: Intrusion Detection
	Nov. 18	Selected Topics: Securing Wireless Networks I
14	Nov. 23	Selected Topics: Securing Wireless Networks II
	Nov. 25	No Class (thanksgiving)
15	Nov. 30	Selected Topics: Measuring Adversaries
	Dec. 2	Selected Topics: Grand Challenges
16	Dec. 7	No Class (student study day)
	Dec. 9	No Class
17	Dec. 14 (5:00-7:45PM)	Project Final Report Due + Project Final Report Presentation

Acknowledgements

The contents of this course have, in one way or another, adopted materials of Dr. Matt Bishop (UC Davis), Dr. Jean-Pierre Hubaux (EPFL, Switzerland), Dr. Stephen Kent (BBN), Dr. Butler Lampson (Microsoft Research), Dr. Vern Paxson (UC  Berkeley and ICSI), Dr. Ron Rivest (MIT), Dr. Ravi Sandhu (GMU), Dr. David Wagner (UC Berkeley). Many thanks to all!