Syllabus
CS 6463 Access Control and Trust Negotiation: Theory and
Practice
Spring 2007
Instructor:
Dr. William H. Winsborough
Class Periods: MW 7:00 - 8:15pm
Lecture Hall: SB 2.02.10
Course Homepage:
http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~winsboro/teaching/CS6463-S07/
Prerequisite: Consent of instructor.
Text: None. This course will be based on papers from the
research literature and readings placed on reserve in the library.
Instructor Office: SB 4.01.26
Office Hours: MW 4-5pm and by appointment
Phone: (210) 458-5659
Email Address: winsboro at cs dot utsa dot edu
Course Objective:
-
To become acquainted with techniques, goals, fundamental results, and
current research issues in authorization, access control, trust
negotiation, and related security systems.
-
To develop research skills such as the ability to read and understand
computer science research literature, critical thinking, and
articulation of one's ideas and analyses in both oral and written form.
-
To serve as an introduction to an area in which research
opportunities exist at UTSA.
Course Description:
Access control is one of the most important and pervasive security
technique. It is used in almost all information systems where
security is a concern. This course begins by introducing many of the
fundamental results in access control. With this perspective, we then
turn to trust negotiation, which is an approach to managing trust
establishment in distributed environments such as networks that span
multiple domains. In this context, much of the information about the
requester of a service, which may be needed in order to decide whether
the service should be authorized, is itself sensitive information that
must be protected from unauthorized access. This creates a kind of
chicken-and-egg situation where the very information needed for making
access control decisions may itself be subject to access control.
Many interesting protocols and negotiation strategies have been
developed to enable authorization nevertheless to be granted. However
this is an area where much work still needs to be done, making it of
particular interest to students looking for thesis and dissertation
topics. The course will additionally provide an introduction to the
closely related area of Identity Management Systems.
This course does not significantly overlap with the course CS 6463 on
trust management also taught by the instructor, nor does it require
that or any other course as a prerequisite.
Course Activities:
- Assignments.
These may ask you to work some exercises, or to read a paper and either
answer some questions about it or write a review or synopsis of the paper.
- Paper presentations.
Each student will be required to give one or two presentations
summarizing papers assigned for the whole class to read.
- Participation in discussions. The course will devote one
or more lecture periods to each paper. Although our consideration of
each paper will begin with a presentation of each paper by either the
instructor or a student, the following discussion will require a high
degree of student participation, particularly with respect to the
assessment of the papers. Though the discussions will be lead by the
instructor, all students will be expected to participate and to
cooperate with the group as we strive to share a stimulating and
insightful analytical experience. Note that attendance is mandatory.
- Class project. Each student will complete a class project, the
content of which will be agreed upon with the instructor. Typical
examples would be to develop a small application by using one or more
trust negotiation software packages, or to write a paper comparing and
contrasting trust negotiation techniques and discussing their
advantages and disadvantages. The project should be seen as an
opportunity to taylor the course content to the taste of the
individual student.
Grading:
- Assignments: 25%
- Paper presentations: 25%
- Participation in discussion: 20%
- Class project: 30%