Computer Laboratory

Course pages 2015–16

Security I

Principal lecturer: Dr Markus Kuhn
Taken by: Part IB
Past exam questions

No. of lectures: 12
Suggested hours of supervisions: 3
Prerequisite courses: Mathematical Methods I, Discrete Mathematics, Operating Systems, Complexity Theory
This course is a prerequisite for Security II.

Aims

This course covers some essential computer-security techniques, focussing mainly on private-key cryptography, discretionary access control and common software vulnerabilities.

Lectures

  • Introduction. Malicious intent. Security policies, targets, mechanisms. Aspects of confidentiality, integrity, availability, privacy. Requirements across different applications.

  • Cryptography. Overview, private vs. public-key ciphers, MACs vs. signatures, certificates, capabilities of adversary, Kerckhoffs’ principle.

  • Classic ciphers. Attacks on substitution and transposition ciphers, Vigenére. Perfect secrecy: one-time pads.

  • Private-key encryption. Stream ciphers, pseudo-random generators, attacking linear-congruential RNGs and LFSRs. Semantic security definitions, oracle queries, advantage, computational security, security proofs.

  • Block ciphers. Pseudo-random functions and permutations. Birthday problem, random mappings. Feistel/Luby-Rackoff structure, DES, TDES, AES.

  • Chosen-plaintext attack security. Security with multiple encryptions, randomized encryption. Modes of operation: ECB, CBC, OFB, CNT.

  • Message authenticity. Malleability, MACs, existential unforgeability, CBC-MAC, ECBC-MAC, CMAC, birthday attacks, Carter-Wegman one-time MAC.

  • Authenticated encryption. Chosen-ciphertext attack security, ciphertext integrity, encrypt-and-authenticate, authenticate-then-encrypt, encrypt-then-authenticate, padding oracle example, GCM.

  • Entity authentication. Passwords, trusted path, phishing, CAPTCHA. Authentication protocols: replay attacks, one-way and challenge-response protocols, Needham-Schroeder, protocol failure examples.

  • Operating system security. Trusted computing base, domain separation, reference mediation, residual information protection.

  • Discretionary access control. Matrix model, DAC in POSIX and Windows, elevated rights and setuid bits, capabilities, Clark-Wilson integrity.

  • Software security. Malicious software. Common implementation vulnerabilities: buffer overflows, integer overflows, meta characters, syntax incompatibilities, race conditions, unchecked values, side channels, random-bit sources.

Objectives

By the end of the course students should

  • be familiar with core security terms and concepts;

  • understand security definitions of modern private-key cryptographic primitives;

  • understand the POSIX and Windows NTFS discretionary access control system;

  • understand the most common security pitfalls in software development.

Recommended reading

Katz, J., Lindell, Y. (2015). Introduction to modern cryptography. Chapman & Hall/CRC (2nd ed.).
Paar, Ch. & Pelzl, J. (2010). Understanding cryptography. Springer.
Gollmann, D. (2010). Computer security. Wiley (3rd ed.).