Computer Laboratory – Course material 2010

Course material 2010–11

Security I

Lecturer: Dr M.G. Kuhn

No. of lectures: 12

Prerequisite courses: Discrete Mathematics II, Operating Systems

This course is a prerequisite for Security II.

Aims

This course covers essential concepts of computer security and cryptography.

Lectures

Cryptography. Introduction, terminology, finite rings and fields, modular arithmetic, GF(), pseudo-random functions and permutations.
Classic ciphers. Vigenére, perfect secrecy, Vernam, computational security, Kerckhoffs’ principle, random bit sources.
Stream ciphers. Attacking linear-congruential RNGs and LFSRs, Trivium, RC4.
Block ciphers. SP networks, Feistel/Luby-Rackoff structure, DES, AES, modes of operation, message authentication codes.
Secure hash functions. One-way functions, collision resistance, Merkle-Damgård construction, padding, birthday problem, MD5, SHA, HMAC, stream authentication, Merkle tree, Lamport one-time signatures.
Asymmetric cryptography. Key-management problem, signatures, certificates, PKI, discrete-logarithm problem, Diffie-Hellman key exchange, ElGamal encryption and signature, hybrid cryptography.
Entity authentication. Passwords, trusted path, phishing, CAPTCHA. Authentication protocols: one-way and challenge-response protocols, Needham-Schroeder, protocol failure examples, hardware tokens.
Access control. Discretionary access control matrix, DAC in POSIX and Windows, elevated rights and setuid bits, capabilities, mandatory access control, covert channels, Clark-Wilson integrity.
Operating system security. Trusted computing base, domain separation, reference mediation, residual information protection.
Software security. Malicious software, viruses. Common implementation vulnerabilities: buffer overflows, integer overflows, meta characters, syntax incompatibilities, race conditions, unchecked values, side channels.
Network security. Vulnerabilities of TCP/IP, DNS. HTTP authentication, cookies, cross-site scripting, browser sandboxes. Firewalls, VPNs.
Security policies and management. Application-specific security requirements, targets and policies, security management, BS 7799.

Objectives

By the end of the course students should

be familiar with core security terms and concepts;
have a basic understanding of some commonly used attack techniques and protection mechanisms;
have gained basic insight into aspects of modern cryptography and its applications;
appreciate the range of meanings that “security” has across different applications.

Recommended reading

* Paar, Ch. & Pelzl, J. (2010). Understanding cryptography. Springer.
Gollmann, D. (2006). Computer security. Wiley (2nd ed.).