NPS CS4614 Summer 2014

Naval Postgraduate School Summer 2014

CS4614: Advanced Topics in Computer Security (3-1) Faculty: Garfinkel

Syllabus

Contact Information

Course Location:	Google Hangouts (or VTC)
Instructor:	Simson L. Garfinkel, Ph.D.
Phone:	202-649-0029
Internet e-mail:	slgarfin
Website:	http://www.simson.net

Course Information

Course Goal

This course teaches students the seminal computer security papers of the past four decades. We use these papers to build graduate level knowledge and reasoning skills. We do this through reading and discussing the papers, both verbally and in writing. This pedagogical approach is constructivist, in encouraging the students to develop their own viewpoints and conclusions.

Course Description

The seminar format requires that students be grounded in information assurance fundamentals.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Read and Understand an academic research paper on computer security.

Course Format

The course format is a reading and discussion seminar. Each week explores a central concept in computer security with three papers. The first class each week will be devoted to class management and previewing the week's papers. The second class will be a deep-dive on the papers. For the third class students will find follow-up papers, prepare discussions, and present those papers in class.

Prerequisites

We assume that students are familiar with current best practices for administration and configuration of commercial products for the day-to-day processing of information. Particular emphasis is placed on research regarding the protection of high value data, the foundations of high assurance policy enforcement, and the uses of multilevel security.

Students must have graduate level abilities to research, organize and evaluate technical problems, and to participate in related discussions (e.g., speaking, explaining, querying, and active listening).

Assessment

Grades are calculated as follows:

In-class discussion: 50% Online discussion: 25%

Citation Policy

It is expected that you will reference a variety of articles and other sources in the preparation of your assignments and final project. You are welcome to use either the so-called "Harvard Style" or IEEE style to cite your references. A URL without an author, title, publication title, and publication date is not an acceptable citation format. Citations that are bare URLs will be ignored.

Wikipedia entries are surprisingly good and will frequently be recommended as supplementary reading in this course. However, due to the nature of how Wikipedia is complied and edited, Wikipedia entries are not to be used as authortative citations in this course.

Protocols

Communication is a central part of every course. This section of the syllabus describes what we expect from your communications with your fellow students and the course staff.

Notifications

For announcements and assignments, the course Piazza collaboration site is our authoritative form of communication. Students are expected to either check the Piazza website at least three times a week or sign up for e-mail alerts. If you miss an announcement, it should be on the Piazza site.

Homework

All homework is due on Friday of each week for the week that it is assigned. Late homework is not accepted except in extraordinary cases. It is our intent to have graded homework back to you by the following monday.

Class Participation

This is a seminar-style class. As such,class participation on the website is an important part of the experience.

Your grade for class participation will be based on your contributions on the class website.

Students will be given a "first half" class participation grade following the midterm examination, giving students a "heads up" on how they are doing while there is still an opportunity to make substantive improvements.

General protocols for Email and Discussion Forums

Although email and discussion forums may feel like talking, it's important to remember that they are written communication. You may feel the need to quickly respond to a message, but many minutes, hours, or even days may elapse between the time that you write something and the time it will be read. Therefore:

• Before you send or post a message, take the time to read it through from beginning to end.

• Please be sure to check your spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Avoid sending large blocks of text.

• In general, avoid writing messages in UPPERCASE, as this makes your message hard to read and is impolite in modern electronic communications.

Discussion Forum Protocols

• Participation is required. We will monitor both how many new threads you start and how often you respond to threads started by others. Both are required for full credit.

• All online discussion must be civil. Feel free to dissect the idea presented by someone else, but do not attack the person.

• Try to be concise in your messages.

• Do not quote extensively from the works of others; post links instead.

• If you do post a link, please write a few sentences that summarize it and present your opinion about the work. Do not simply post links; this does not count as participation in a discussion.

• Remember, there are multiple copies made of everything that is posted in the discussion forum. There are copies on backup tapes, copies on every computer that accesses the forum, and potentially copies sent by email as well. Even though the intend the forum to be a "safe" space for academic discussions, remember that anything you write might well come back to haunt you.

Communication with Course Staff

• All email directed to the course staff should be sent to the professor.

• Email should only be used for personal matters; if you have a question about the content of the course that others would benefit from, please post it to the discussion forum.

• Homework should not be submitted by email unless specifically requested by the course staff for a particular assignment.

• Please obtain prior approval before sending email messages with attachments larger than 2MB.

• We will strive to answer most mail within 24 hours; if you do not have a response within 48 hours, please resend your message.

Office Hours

Professor Garfinkel maintains regular office hours and is available at other times by appointment.

Schedule

OS Security

• Saltzer and Schroeder, The Protection of Information in Computer Systems, ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles (October 1973) HTML HTML2
• Karger and Schell, Thirty Years later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation, ACSAC 2002

• Reflections on Trusting Trust, Ken Thompson, Communications of the ACM, 27:8, Aug 1984
  • Reflections on trusting trust revisited,

• Saltzer, The Protection of Information on Computer Systems

Crypto Attacks

• Bernstein, D. J. Cache-timing attacks on AES, 2004
  • * Brumley, D. and Boneh, D. Remote timing attacks are practical. Computer Networks 48, 5 (2005), 701-716
  • (See also Brumley, B. B., and Tuveri, N. Remote timing attacks are still practical, In Computer Security-ESORICS 2011, Spring 2011, pp. 355-371

Public Key Infrastructure

• Ellison, Ten Risks of PKI: What You're not Being iTold about Public Key Infrastructure
• Davis, Compliance Defects in Public-Key * Cryptography
• Davis, Defective Sign & Encrypt in S/Mime, PKCS#7, MOSS, PEM, PGP, and XML

Secure Systems

• Schell, Information Security: Science, Pseudoscience, and Flying Pigs
• Denning, The Limits of Formal Security Models

Mobile Hardware Vulnerabilities

• Chan, An Overview of Smart Card Security
• Skorobogatov, Optical Fault Induction Attacks
• Samyde, On a New Way to Read Data from Memory

Public Key Escrow

• Denning, The Future of Cryptography
• Abelson, The Risks of Key Recovery, Key Escrow, and Trusted Third Party Encryption
• First Half Test

Common Criteria

• Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation (specific readings will be identified)
• Julian, Turning Security on Its Head

==Physics Principles and Computer Systems

• Baranger, Chaos, Complexity and Entropy: A physics talk for non-physicsts

Aggregation and Inference

• Lunt, Aggregation and Inference: Facts and Fallacies
• Denning, A dialogue on Aggregation Problems

Quantum Cryptography

• Singh, The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, To Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography - Section on Quantum Cryptography
• Wikipedia, Quantum Cryptography, Section 1.2, attacks.
• Paterson, Why Quantum Cryptography?

Electronic Voting

• Evans, Election Security: Perception and Reality
• Wertheimer, Trusted Agent Report: Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting System
• Lamone, Response to: Department of Legislative Services Trusted Agent Report on Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting System

See Also

• NIST Computer Security Division Computer Security Research Center early computer security papers
• Seminal Computer Security Papers, Matt Bishop, UC Davis