COURSE INFORMATION

Course description.  Security issues in computing, communications, and electronic commerce. Goals and vulnerabilities; legal and ethical issues; basic cryptology; private and authenticated communication; electronic commerce; software security; viruses and other malicious code; operating system protection; trusted systems design; network security; firewalls; policy, administration and procedures; auditing; physical security; disaster recovery; reliability; content protection; privacy.

Instructor.  Ed Felten.

Assistants in Instruction.  Ruth Dannenfelser · Jennifer Guo · Josh Hug (lead) · Jakub Szefer

Office Hours.  See this page.

Online forum.  If you have general questions about the assignments, lectures, textbook, or other course materials, please post via Piazza. Posts marked private are viewable only by instructors.

Textbook. There is no required or suggested textbook in this course, because there is no one book that covers the right material in an up-to-date fashion. Here are some good books about security, in case you're interested.

• Ross J. Anderson, Security Engineering. [Covers security in general, with many non-computing examples.]
• Dieter Gollmann, Computer Security. [General security textbook. Good for what it covers, but doesn't cover everything.]
• David Kahn, The Codebreakers. [History of cryptography. Not very technical.]
• Steven Levy, Crypto. [History of cryptography since 1970. Non-technical.]
• Niels Ferguson and Bruce Schneier, Practical Cryptography. [Focused coverage of applied cryptography, not the most rigorous.]
• Bruce Schneier, Applied Cryptography. [Very broad coverage of crypto and its applications. Approachable but not as rigorous as Stinson.]
• Douglas R. Stinson, Cryptography Theory and Practice (2nd edition). [Cryptography textbook. Math-intensive.]
• John Viega and Gary McGraw, Building Secure Software. [How to write software that will have fewer security bugs.]

Lectures.  Lectures meet on Mondays and Wednesdays at 11am in Computer Science 104

Homework Policy. Homework will be due at the beginning of class. Late homework will lose 10% of its value for every day of lateness. Homework more than seven days late will not be accepted.

No homework extensions will be given except in extraordinary circumstances (such as documented illness), and then only if the official university procedures are followed.

Unless the assignment explicitly states otherwise, you may not collaborate with other students on the homework. (Of course, if it is a group assignment, you should collaborate within your group!) If you make use of outside sources, you should disclose that fact and cite the sources, as you would in any scholarly work.

Grading.  Grades will be computed by the following formula: 70% homework; 20% final exam; 10% subjective factors such as attendance and class participation.

Exams.  The final exam wil be scheduled by the registrar. Details will appear here once available.