CS513: System Security - Topic Outline

The outline below structures the topics to be covered in class this semester. We are hoping to cover a lot of material, and there is some risk that we won't get through it all.

The outline also contains links to scribed lecture notes for related, past CS513 lectures and, in a few places, draft chapters for a new textbook. These written notes are being offered solely on an "as is" basis --- what is actually covered in lecture this semester and the manner in which that material is presented may differ from these scribed lecture notes. Note. Cornell University Policy restricts the use of these notes. In addition, these notes are copyright F.B. Schneider. All rights reserved.

Readings to accompany each topic are indicated within the outline in square brackets.

[B]	Matt Bishop, Introduction to Computer Security, Addison Wesley, 2005.
[KPS]	Charlie Kaufman, Radia Perlman, and Mike Speciner. Network Security. Private Communication in a Public World. Prentice Hall, 1995.
[S]	Bruce Schneier. Applied Cryptography. Second Edition. Wiley, 1996.

Links are also given to other sources that expand upon the material that will be covered in lecture.

Entries in the outline prefixed by * are given for students wishing to go beyond the anticipated scope of this semester's CS513 offering.

Topic Outline

• Introduction [Additional reading: Trust in Cyberspace chptrs 1 and 6; B chptrs 1 and 12; Saltzer-Schroeder paper; Lampson paper ]
  • Attacks, Threats, and Vulnerabilities
  • Security Properties
  • Enforcement Principles
  • Gold Standard and Accountability
  • Risk Management
• Applied Cryptography
  • Fundamentals of Cryptography [B chptr 8]
    • Hashes and Message Digests [KPS chptr 4; S 18.14; B chptr 8.4]
    • Symmetric Cryptosystems [B chptr 9]
    • Public key cryptosystems[B chptr 8.3]
    • Secret sharing and threshold cryptography [S 3.7]
  • Symmetric cryptosystems and Authentication
  • Key distribution centers and Kerberos [KPS chptrs 7.7-8, 10, 11; IEEE Comm Article; B chptr 9.2]
  • Public key infrastructure [KPS chptrs 7.7; B chptr 9.3]
    • Certificates [RFC 2693--SDSI/SPKI rationale ; B chptr 9.3.1]
    • Naming [B chptr 13]
  • Logic of Authentication
• User Authentication [B chptr 11]
  • Something you know
  • Something you have or are
  • Lamport's One-time Password Scheme
• Privacy Issues
• Authorization [B chptr 14]
  • Access Control Policies [B chptrs 4 -- 7]
  • Discretionary Access Control (DAC) [B chptr 5]
  • Mandatory Access Control (MAC) [B chptr 5]
  • Commercial Security Policies [B chptr 6.3]
  • Role-based access control [B chptr 7.4]
  • Credentials and Delegation [RFC 2693--SDSI/SPKI rationale]
  • *Theory of Protection Matricies [B chptrs 2 and 3]
  • Access Control list pragmatics [B chptr 14.1]
  • Capabilities [B chptr 14.2]
    • Implementation by indirection
    • Implementation by sparse name space
    • Revocation and Review
    • Seen as certificates
  • Delegation in Distributed Systems
• Integrity of Mechanism
  • Attack Techniques [B chptr 26; Stack-smashing; Stack-guard; Heap-attacks; Format-strings]
  • Reference monitors and virtual machines [B chptr 29]
  • *Security in Java
  • SFI Enforcement
  • EM Class Policies
  • Inlined Reference Monitors
  • *Proof Carrying Code
• Information Flow [B chptr 15]
  • Program analysis techniques
  • Quantitative information flow
  • Covert channels [B chptr 16.3]
• Availability and Denial of Service [B chptr 23.4]
• Monitoring, Audit, and Intrusion Detection [B chptrs 21 and 22]
• Anonymity (onion routing, mixes, crowds) [B chptr 13.6.3]
• Firewalls [B chptr 23.3]
• Case Study: Viruses, Worms, etc. [IBM Web page; B chptr 19.1 -- 19.5]
• Case Study: Intellectual Property Protection [Collberg-Thomborson paper]
  • Watermarking
  • Tamper-proofing
  • Obfuscation