Fall 2009 CECS 478/578 - Home Page/Syllabus

  Introduction to Computer Security



Instructor: Burkhard Englert
Office: ECS 531
Phone Number:  (562) 985-7987
Email:  benglert at csulb.edu
Office Hours: We 2-4 pm or by appointment

Section meets:  TuTh 7 - 7:50 pm in VEC 402 and 8:00 - 9:15pm in ECS 403

Lab / Homework Assignments:
  Homework / Lab 1
  Homework / Lab 2
  Homework / Lab 3
  Homework / Lab 4
  Homework / Lab 6
First Midterm Exam: Tuesday, October 20
Second Midterm Exam: Thursday, December 10
FINAL EXAM: Final Project due December 17& Presentation

Prerequisites

CECS 323, 328

Texts (required):

Security in Computing, Fourth Edition by Charles P. Pfleeger and Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, 2007.

Topics

Here is a tentative time table:
 

Week 1: August 31 - September 6
Is there a Security Problem in Computing? (Ch. 1)
Week 2:  September 7 - September 13 Elementary Cryptography - Substitutions / Permutations (Ch. 2.1 - 2.3)
Week 3:  September 14 - September 20
Elementary Cryptography - Symmetric, Assymmetric Encryption, DES, Rijndael (Ch. 2.4-2.6)
Week 4:  September 21 - September 27
Elementary Cryptography - Public Key Encryption, RSA, Digital Signatures (Ch. 2.7 - 2.13)
Week 5:  September 28 - October 4
Program Security - Buffer Overflow Attack and other nonmalicious program errors (Ch. 3.1 - 3.2)
Week 6:  October 5 - October 11
Program Security - Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses, Trapdoors, Controls (Ch. 3.3 - 3.10)
Week 7:  October 12 - October 18
Protection in a General Purpose Operating System - Memory and Address Protection, Access Control (Ch. 4.1 - 4.4)
Week 8:  October 19 - October 25
User Authentication - Passwords (Ch. 4.5 - 4.10)
Week 9:  October 26 - November 1 Trusted Operating System Design (Ch. 5.1 - 5.5)
Week 10:  November 2 - November 8
Network Security - Threats, Security Controls (Ch. 7.1 - 7.3)
Week 11:  November 9 - November 15
Network Security - Firewalls, Intrusion Detection Systems, Secure e-mail (Ch. 7.4 - 7.7)
Week 12:  November 16 - November 22 Administering Security - Planning, Risk Analysis (Ch. 8.1 -8.2)
Week 13:  November 23 - November 29
Administering Security - Security Policies, Physical Security (Ch. 8.3.- 8.4)
Week 14:  November 30 - December 6
Legal, Privacy, Ethical Issues in Computer Security (Ch. 9)
Week 15:  December 7 - December 13   Review

Grade Breakdown / Grading Policy

Homeworks / Lab Projects       25%
Midterm 1       25%
Midterm 2       25%
Final Project            25%

Homework Info

General Info

Links to the current list of assignments can be found at the top of this page. Late homeworks / lab projects will not be accepted; however, your lowest homework/lab score will be dropped.

Regrades

If you believe an error was made in the grading of your homework/lab or exam, you may request a regrade from me during my office hours. No e-mail requests for regrades are accepted.  A request for a regrade must be made no more than a week after the homework/lab/exam has been returned. No requests for regrades will be considered unless they meet this deadline.


Academic Honesty

You are both allowed and encouraged to discuss general algorithms and approaches to homework / lab assignments with your classmates. But these discussions must remain at a high level and not involve actual reports or code being exchanged. In particular, THE SOLUTIONS YOU SUBMIT TO HOMEWORK/LAB ASSIGNMENTS MUST BE YOUR OWN INDEPENDENT WORK. DO NOT SHARE SOLUTIONS.

You are required to include the following Academic Honesty Pledge at the top of each homework you submit:

Honesty Pledge:

I, (insert your name here), pledge that this is my own independent work, which conforms to the guidelines of academic honesty as described in the course syllabus.
The pledge must be worded precisely as above, with your own name inserted. Any plagiarized homeworks / labs will result in the total number of points the homework is worth being DEDUCTED from your total points for the semester (i.e. if the homework is worth 20 points, then 20 points will be SUBTRACTED from your total points for the semester).
 

Attendance Requirements

I strongly recommend that you attend as many lectures as possible. Supplementary material outside of the class textbook will be presented and included in tests, learning activities and programming projects. Lab attendance is mandatory on project due dates. All programming projects must be able to run successfully on the computers in the class lab.

Exams

As shown above in the grade breakdown there will be two midterms and a final project/presentation. To pass the course you must hand in the final project and give a 15-20 minute in class presentation. Topics will be announced later in the semester. Beeper or cell-phone interruptions will result in immediate excusal from the midterms. No make up exams will be given. These exams will test whether or not the student has mastered the material both presented in class or assigned as homework during the semester. I will try to avoid both tricky and ambiguous questions. The week before each exam I will give out a list of problems representative of the level of difficulty of problems the student will be expected to answer on the exam.