CS5430: System Security - Topic Outline

The outline lists the topics to be covered in class this semester.

Links are given to scribed lecture notes for past lectures in previous offerings of this course, draft chapters for a new textbook, and copies of slides. All of this material is 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.

Note. Cornell University Policy restricts the use of notes, which are copyright F.B. Schneider with all rights reserved.

The outline also gives some additional readings to accompany each topic and expand upon the material that will be covered in lecture. These readings are within square brackets.

Topic Outline

• Introduction [Additional reading: Saltzer-Schroeder paper]
• Basic terminology
• Enforcement mechanisms and principles
• Gold Standard and accountability
• Assurance and trust
• Authentication of machines
• Symmetric cryptosystems and authentication
• Key distribution centers and Kerberos [IEEE Comm Article]
• Public key infrastructure
  • Formal account of hierarchical certificate authorities
  • Certification authorities: Reasoning about cross-linked CA's
  • Certificate transparency
  • Naming
• Measured principals and gating functions (Slide set)
• Authentication of humans
  • Something you know
  • Something you have
  • One-time Passwords from Synchronized Clocks (aka RSA SecurID)
  • Something you are
  • Two-factor authentication
  • Phishing-resistant authentication
  • Federation and single sign-on
  • Privacy issues
• Authorization
• Discretionary access control (DAC)
• Access control matrix
• *Undecidability of privilege propagation
• Access control lists
• Capabilities
  • Tagged memory implementation
  • Protected storage implementation
• Case study: Access control in UNIX
• Mandatory access control (MAC)
• Chinese wall
• Domain type enforcement (DTE)
• Clark-Wilson commercial policies
• Role-based access control
• Credentials-based authorization
• Worked example [Lampson paper]
• Information Flow
• Labels and Policies
• Static Enforcement
• Dynamic Enforcement
• Enforcement mechanisms
• Isolation
• Mapping and multiplexing
• Processes, virtual machines, and containers
• Monitoring
• Reference monitors
• Inlined reference monitors (IRM)
• SFI and CFI
• EM enforceability
• Assumptions under attack
• Covert channels
• Side channels

Appendix: Some Notes on Cryptography

• Fundamentals of Cryptography
  • Hashes and message digests
  • Symmetric cryptosystems
  • Public key cryptosystems